The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council (HRC) held a panel discussion on Thursday on ensuring equitable, affordable, timely, and universal access for all countries to vaccines in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said at the event that as the world entered the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the international community stood at a crossroads and needed to “choose the right path.”

“The world has been profoundly fortunate to have had effective COVID-19 vaccines developed at an unprecedented pace. Science has saved millions of lives and livelihoods. But we have failed to administer the vaccines in a fair and equitable manner,” she said.

Emphasizing that the “pandemic’s finish line is still out of sight,” Bachelet said that “a false narrative that it may be over is arising in some countries with high vaccination rates, and where the effects of the Omicron variant have been relatively mild.”