WHO concerned about the speed of spread of the Delta variant

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Sharjah24 – AFP: World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expresses concern about the rapid spread of the Delta variant of Covid-19 while access to the vaccine remains extremely unbalanced around the world.

Commenting on this, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director general said, "Delta is the most transmissible of the variants identified so far. It has been identified in at least 85 countries and is spreading rapidly among unvaccinated populations."

He added, "The problem is lack of access to vaccines and that's causing a two track pandemic: those who have vaccines are getting better significantly and they're opening up their society, those who don't have vaccines are facing serious Covid situations with serious surges in cases and deaths due to Covid, that's the reality now."

Michael Ryan, chief of WHO emergency response programme pointed out, "Any imposition of such a requirement for vaccination around the world does in effect deliver a double inequality as individuals from countries who have no access to vaccine will then have no access to travel, and therefore it is very important that if we're going to impose restrictions on the travel of individuals, we must at least attempt to do that from a level playing field of having access to vaccine. So for example in the case of yellow fever, WHO does recommend for yellow fever the vaccination of travellers going to endemic areas but that is on the basis of the universal access to that vaccine at a fair price, so therefore all of WHO recommendations related to vaccination requirements are always on the basis that there is fair and universal access to that product."