The U.N. official spearheading global vaccination efforts against the coronavirus said Monday the number of countries where 10% or less of the population has been vaccinated dropped from 34 to 18 since January and called for accelerated progress to end the pandemic.
Assistant Secretary-General Ted Chaiban told the U.N. Security Council that with over 6 million lives lost to COVID-19 and just over 1 million new coronavirus infections reported to the World Health Organization in the last 24 hours, it is urgent to increase vaccinations in countries where it wasn’t possible to boost rates in 2021.
“The next six months are critical,” he said. “In 2022, we must take the rapid action needed to accelerate vaccination. The window of opportunity is gradually closing. We risk losing the momentum and failing on vaccine equity.”
Chaiban said more than 11.1 billion doses of vaccines have been administered globally, and 124 of the 194 WHO member nations have vaccinated more than 40% of their populations and 51 countries have reached more than 70%.
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