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GENEVA, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Rich countries squabbling over
COVID-19 vaccine supplies must consider the situation in poorer
parts of the world, the World Health Organization said on
Friday, warning that hoarding of shots "keeps the pandemic
burning".
WHO officials were speaking after the European Commission
said it had agreed a plan to control exports of vaccines from
the European Union, including to Britain, arguing it needed to
do so to ensure its own supplies.
The EU, whose member states are far behind Israel, Britain
and the United States in rolling out vaccines, is scrambling to
get supplies just as the West's biggest drugmakers slow
deliveries to the bloc due to production problems.
"If we hoard vaccines and we are not sharing, there will be
three major problems. One, I have said it, it will be a
catastrophic moral failure and two it keeps the pandemic burning
and three very slow global economy recovery," Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, told a virtual briefing.
"So it is our choice and I hope we will choose the right
things," he said, almost a year since he declared a public
health emergency over the emergence of the coronavirus.
Mike Ryan, WHO's top emergency expert, told the briefing
-also attended by a midwife from Uganda and a nurse from
Pakistan - that people had to think about frontline colleagues
like them.
He decried countries "fighting over the cake" when when
frontline health workers in poor countries "don't even have
access to the crumbs".
The WHO said the world needed to diversify the supply chain
for making COVID-19 vaccines and that it was looking at other
suppliers.
The organization said last week it had reached an agreement
with Pfizer/BioNTech for 40 million doses of its vaccine and
should be able to start delivering vaccines to poor and
lower-middle income countries next month under the COVAX
programme.
It hopes to give emergency-use listing for the
AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine within two weeks, Soumya
Swaminathan, WHO's chief scientist, said.
Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director for access to
medicines and health products, also told reporters the WHO had a
team in China to inspect vaccine facilities.
She told the briefing the WHO had a meeting with the
manufacturers of Russia's vaccine last Friday, with more
meetings due as they wait for more information.
(Reporting by Emma Farge, Michael Shields and Matthias Blamont;
Writing by Alison Williams; Editing by Jon Boyle and Pravin
Char)
