An AFP count showed that the number of coronavirus vaccines worldwide exceeded 200 million worldwide, as affluent G7 countries promised more than double aid to support access for the underprivileged.
With 45 percent of the injections so far among the wealthy club – which makes up just ten percent of the world’s population – the G7 said on Friday that its support for projects such as the World Health Organization’s Covax now amounts to $ 7.5 billion.
The growing promises of the US, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Japan and Canada came when a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Britain, showed a draft resolution to other countries on the global body, calling on rich countries to share doses with poor and war-torn states.
According to AFP, the text emphasizes the need for solidarity, fairness and efficiency and is donated to donate vaccine doses from developed economies to low- and middle-income countries and other countries in need.
Meanwhile, Russia has continued its own vaccination program, saying 120,000 doses of its third authorized coronavirus vaccine, CoviVac, will reach humans by March, in the footsteps of the Sputnik V and EpiVacCorona shots.
The new vaccine, which was still in the final phase of clinical trials, was manufactured by the state-run Chumakov Center in Moscow and uses a different development method than Sputnik and EpiVacCorona, with an inactive virus.
“Today, Russia is the only country in which there are already three vaccines to prevent Covid infection,” said Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.
And New Zealand has launched the Director-General of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, called a ‘small but important step in a long voyage’, by pushing high-risk citizens’ ships and those from overseas return, launch with border and quarantine workers.
Neighboring Australia starts its own scheme on Monday.
– Jump in the row –
In Argentina, Health Minister Gines Gonzalez Garci resigned late Friday after it emerged he had helped friends leave the queue for vaccine shots.
President Alberto Fernandez has asked him to quit after a 71-year-old journalist, Horacio Verbitsky, announced on the radio that his long-standing friendship with the minister had helped him to be vaccinated in his office in front of the general public.
Local media reported that other people close to the government were also vaccinated at the Ministry of Health.
In Romania, the government has pushed the country’s thousands of homeless on the priority list for vaccines and put them on an equal footing with the elderly and chronically ill, reaching 300 in the first days of the ride.
“These people are one of those most exposed to the risk of infection. It is difficult for most of them to follow infection control measures,” Health Minister Andrei Baciu told AFP.
Although countries are moving forward with vaccinations, the death toll is soaring, with an AFP count reaching more than 2.45 million worldwide by 1100 GMT on Saturday, with nearly 111 million cases.
– ‘How we beat the pandemic’ –
Despite the still worrying figures, it could be an uphill battle to get vaccinated because skepticism remains entrenched.
US President Joe Biden on Friday reassured people that the shots were safe when he visited a Pfizer factory in Michigan.
‘Please take the vaccine for you, your family, your community, this country, if it’s your turn and it’s available. That’s how we beat this pandemic, ‘he said.
And because vaccines should not reach the majority of people almost everywhere, countries are still using known methods to limit infections.
Senegal’s government said on Saturday it would extend another month from 9pm to 5pm, which was first introduced in early January in the capital Dakar and the West Thies region.
Meanwhile, French health minister Olivier Veran said he had asked a local official to harden an evening clock in the southeastern city of Nice and the surrounding Alpes-Maritimes department, or even in a “partial or complete exclusion” to return.
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