The development follows SAGE’s recommendations on 5 January on how the similar Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine should be used, as deaths from the new coronavirus topped 2.1 million globally. Both are so-called mRNA vaccines which trigger an immune response by teaching the body to make special proteins, as opposed to including any live or inactive weakened virus.

‘Exceptional circumstances’

“Based on current evidence, SAGE recommends the administration of two doses – 100 micrograms, 0.5 millilitre each – with an interval of 28 days between doses”, said Dr Alejandro Cravioto, SAGE Chair. “SAGE recommends at present that, if judged necessary, due to exceptional circumstances of COVID-19

Every death is someone’s parent, partner, child, or friend, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organiztion (WHO), told the briefing. He noted that exactly a year ago, fewer than 1,500 cases of COVID-19 had been reported.

‘Take heart, take hope’ 

Vaccines have given the world hope, which, according to the WHO chief is why “every life we lose now is even more tragic”. 

“We must take heart, take hope and take action”, he said, reiterating his call for health workers and older people in all countries to be vaccinated within the first 100 days of 2021. 

Brink of catastrophe 

Last week, Tedros said that the world stood on “the brink of a catastrophic moral failure” if it does not deliver equitable access to vaccines.  

Two new studies show that “it wouldn’t just be a moral failure, it would be an economic failure” too, he said. 

An

Addressing the WHO’s Executive Board Meeting, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Adviser to the new US President, said that Mr. Biden intended to issue a directive within hours so that the country can become part of the COVAX platform to advance multilateral efforts to distribute coronavirus vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics. 

Speaking one year ago “to the day” since the United States confirmed its first case of COVID-19 infection, Dr. Fauci noted that global infections had now surpassed 90 million.

This was a “devastating number that continues to grow”, he said, while paying tribute to the scientists, public health officials and frontline healthcare workers, and community health workers who had worked “heroically” to fight the virus.

They had developed medical countermeasures “at truly phenomenal speed, adapting their responses as more is known about the virus, he said, “courageously treating the millions of people who have been stricken by this

“The virus can still travel from the vastly unvaccinated massive population of the Global South to the Global North, including in its increasingly mutating forms”, Obiora Okafor, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and international solidarity, said in a statement. 

He explained that with mutations constantly evolving, only inoculating rich countries would likely “complicate or delay” the eradication of the virus. 

Skewed vaccine delivery 

The last few weeks of 2020 witnessed the approval of several COVID-19 vaccines by regulators in various countries, “offering much hope to billions of people worldwide”, according to the UN expert.  

And while several States, mostly in the north, have already secured large quantities of vaccine and have begun inoculation campaigns, this has not been the case for most of the Global South, where close to 90 per cent of the world’s population lives. 

“The world, therefore, faces a sharp and highly problematic vaccine-divide

Commenting on the deal at the regular end-of-week press conference in Geneva, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said pending emergency authorization, close to 150 million doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine should also be available for COVAX to distribute, up to the end of March. 

February delivery date 

“Together, these announcements mean COVAX could begin delivering doses in February, provided we can finalize a supply agreement”, he said, noting that the deal “also opens the door” for countries with spare doses, to donate them. 

In a press release outlining the deal, Tedros said the “urgent and equitable rollout of vaccines is not just a moral imperative, it’s also a strategic and economic imperative…This agreement with Pfizer will help to enable COVAX to save lives, stabilize health systems and drive the global economic recovery.” 

He told journalists that with the United States back in the WHO fold – following President Biden’s executive