Sharjah24 – Reuters: WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a video message delivered to the seventy-second session of the World Health Organization Regional Committee for the Western Pacific on Monday (October. 25), that "the pandemic will end when the world chooses to end it."

"We have all the tools we need: effective public health tools and effective medical tools… but those tools have not been shared equitably," he said.

About 31% of people who have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine were from high income countries as of October 25, and at least 25% were from Europe and North America, according to Reuters' vaccination tracker.

The annual conference was held in a "hybrid format" for the first time in Himeji City, where 270 participants from 37 Countries joined either online or at Himeji. Fifty attendees from five countries, including WHO members, joined the session on-site, abiding by infection measures.

Despite its slow rollout, 69.7% of the population has been vaccinated in Japan. Daily cases have dramatically decreased across the country compared to the peak during the fifth wave of infections when the capital was logging more than 5,000 new cases a day, bringing its medical system to a brink.