12:20 - 12.01.2021

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January 12, Fineko/abc.az. The vaccination of health workers and high-risk population should be launched in all countries of the world within the next 100 days.

ABC.AZ reports that the above-said statement was made by World Health Organization’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a briefing in Geneva.

“I am calling for a "collective commitment" to get vaccinations underway worldwide for health workers and others who are at high risk of contracting Covid-19, in the next 100 days,” he emphasized.

In his opinion, governments, manufacturers, civil society, religious and community leaders, must come together to create the greatest mass mobilisation in history for equitable vaccination.

In this connection, Tedros applied with a request to the vaccine manufacturers to "quickly provide the necessary data", which will allow WHO to consider the matter of inclusion of their drugs in the list of recommended for emergency use.

He noted that the WHO team was in China to assess the compliance of Sinovac and Sinopharm ahead of their potential emergency-use listing.

This work is carried out in connection with the sending of the WHO mission experts to China to find out the origin of the coronavirus, the head of the WHO said.

According to Ghebreyesus, WHO is also waiting for additional information from Indian specialists from the Serum Institute for the possible inclusion of the vaccine it produces, developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, in the emergency use list.

Touching upon the problem of coronavirus mutation, he recalled that "reducing the transmission of Covid-19 limits the possibility of developing new dangerous varieties" of the virus. "Apparently, diagnostic tools and vaccines are effective against the current virus," but in the future, it may be necessary to "adjust" them, he did not rule out.

Ghebreyesus informed about a meeting of a group of scientific experts convened by the WHO on Tuesday to outline "global research priorities for the coming year".