WHO: Over 170 countries have joined COVAX vaccine facility

More than 170 countries have joined the World Health Organisation's COVAX global vaccine plan to help buy and distribute immunization shots for COVID-19 fairly around the world, the body's director general said.

"More than 170 countries have joined the COVAX facility, gaining guaranteed access to the world's largest portfolio of vaccine candidates," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in pre-recorded comments on Thursday ahead of Friday's deadline to join the facility.

WHO previously said 92 lower-income nations were seeking assistance via the facility, and some 80 higher-income nations had expressed interest, but some still had to confirm their intention by the deadline.

The WHO and the GAVI vaccine alliance are leading the COVAX facility, which aims to procure and deliver 2 billion doses of approved vaccines by the end of 2021. But some countries that have secured their own supplies through bilateral deals, including the United States, have said they will not join COVAX.

"The first vaccine to be approved may not be the best. The more shots on goal we have the higher the chances of having a very safe, very efficacious vaccine," Tedros added in his remarks made during a webinar hosted by the National University of Singapore.

- One in 7 reported COVID-19 infections is among health workers- WHO- 

One in seven cases of COVID-19 reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) is a health worker and in some countries that figure rises to one in three, the agency said on Thursday.

The WHO called for frontline medical workers to be provided with protective equipment to prevent them from being infected with the novel coronavirus, and potentially spreading it to their patients and families.

"Globally around 14% of COVID cases reported to the WHO are among health workers and in some countries it's as much as 35%," WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

He added data was limited however and it was hard to know if people were infected at work or in their communities.

Tedros was addressing a news briefing marking World Patient Safety Day, as the number of people reported infected with the coronavirus neared 30 million, with 938,291 deaths, according to a Reuters tally.

"It's not just the risk of infection. Every day, health workers are exposed to stress, burnout, stigma, discrimination and even violence," he added.

Guy Ryder, director-general of the UN's International Labor Organization (ILO), said the WHO figures on infections among health workers were a "shocking testimony".

"Patients' safety requires guarantees of health worker safety as well - two sides of the same coin. Regrettably too often those guarantees are missing," Ryder said.

WHO's emergency chief Mike Ryan said that three things haunt health workers on the frontlines of infectious disease outbreaks.

"One is to stand there and watch people die because you can't help them. Two is to see a worker fall and be infected, your fellow worker and friend. "And the third - and the one that really weighs on health workers most of the time in these situations - is the chance they could take that disease home to their families, to their
friends, to their children," Ryan said.

More than 1,000 nurses have died after contracting the virus, the International Council of Nurses, a Geneva-based association, said in a statement.

(Source: Reuters)

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