WORLD

The WHO urged wealthy countries Friday to stop vaccinating children against Covid-19 and instead donate doses to poorer nations, while warning that the pandemic's second year looked set to be more deadly.

World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus voiced outrage that a number of rich countries were now vaccinating children and teenagers, while poorer states had barely begun vaccinating health workers and the most vulnerable groups.

Instead of offering jabs to young and healthy people, he called on countries to give their doses to the Covax global vaccine-sharing scheme and thereby ensure that those most in need in all countries receive protection.

COVID-19 vaccines approved by the United States like Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson have effectiveness against the B1617 variant of the virus that is predominant in India, which is experiencing one of the worst outbreaks of the pandemic, a top American health official said.

The observation is based on the latest data about the variant and the three major vaccines approved by the United States, said Dr Francis Collins, Director of National Institute of Science.

“The data is coming in, and it looks very encouraging that the U.S. -approved vaccines, the Pfizer, the Moderna, the J&J, do have effectiveness against this variant called B1617,” Collins told the media.

The catastrophic scale of the Covid-19 pandemic could have been prevented, an independent global panel concluded Wednesday, but a "toxic cocktail" of dithering and poor coordination meant the warning signs went unheeded.

The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR) said a series of bad decisions meant Covid-19 went on to kill at least 3.3 million people so far and devastate the global economy.

Institutions "failed to protect people" and science-denying leaders eroded public trust in health interventions, the IPPPR said in its long-awaited final report.

Top public health officials of the Biden administration told US lawmakers on Tuesday that the ongoing devastating surge in Covid-19 cases in India is the result of an “incorrect assumption” that led to reopening “prematurely” and it has become a cautionary tale of the dangers of not being careful.

“The reason that India is in such dire straits now is that they had an original surge and made the incorrect assumption that they were finished with it,” Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infection Diseases and chief medical adviser to the US president, said at a Senate hearing when asked what lessons could be learnt from the situation in India.

America's leading infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci is making a strong and urgent case for developed countries and pharma companies to rush Covid-19 vaccines and raw materials to make vaccines to India saying vaccinating the population is the best possible "endgame" to contain a pandemic that is devastating the sub-continent.

Dr Fauci's plea comes amid steep decline in vaccination in the US, which has delivered shots to nearly half its population, and a measure of control over Covid-19 in other western countries, all sitting on stockpiles of unused vaccinations.

Western drug companies are also insisting that they will ramp up production of vaccines themselves rather than loosen control over patents or raw materials, maintaining that sending vaccines to India is a quicker way to meet its needs.