WHO urges all nations to join global shared vaccine bid

Geneva: The World Health Organization (WHO) called on all countries to quickly join its global shared vaccine programme and spelled out who would get its eventual coronavirus jabs first.

The WHO's director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a videoconference that without vaccinating the planet's highest-risk populations simultaneously, it would be impossible to rebuild the global economy.

And he said the most exposed 20 percent of each country's population including front-line health workers, adults over 65 and those with pre-existing conditions -- would be targeted in the first wave of vaccinations, once the WHO-led COVAX shared facility can roll out a proven safe and effective vaccine.

"The fastest way to end this pandemic and to reopen economies is to start by protecting the highest risk populations everywhere, rather than the entire populations of just some countries," Tedros told a virtual press conference.

Tedros Adhanom specified that the allocation of vaccines would be rolled out in two phases.

In the first, doses would be allocated proportionally to all participating countries simultaneously, in a bid to reduce the overall global risk.

In the second phase, individual countries' threat and vulnerability level will then come into play. The novel coronavirus has killed nearly 775,000 people and infected almost 22 million since the outbreak emerged in China last December.

WHO is working with governments and the private sector to both accelerate the science, through the ACT-Accelerator, and ensure that new innovations are available to everyone, everywhere starting with those at highest risk.

Since May, WHO has been in extensive consultations to develop a new framework to guide fair and equitable access to diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines, for COVID-19 across all countries, Tedros Adhanom said.