UN Health News

The World Health Organization (WHO) is supporting a South African consortium in establishing the first COVID-19 mRNA vaccine technology transfer hub, the UN agency announced on Monday.

Millions more COVID vaccines need to be donated now to save lives and help the UN health agency reach the key global target of having 70 per cent of all national populations vaccinated, by the middle of 2022.

The number of new COVID-19 cases reported to the UN health agency has declined for seven weeks in a row, in what the top official there called on Monday “the longest sequence of weekly declines during the pandemic so far”.

Every year on 21 September, the United Nations invites people around the world to celebrate peace by observing 24 hours of ceasefire and non-violence. On Sunday, the UN chief kicked off the 100-day countdown to the International Day of Peace.

UN health agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged all countries on Monday to support a pandemic preparedness treaty, warning that it would be a “monumental error” to think the danger of COVID-19 has passed.

Dramatically increasing global manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatments, and ensuring equitable access, is the fastest way to end the pandemic, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Friday urged the world’s richest economies to take a central role in ending the COVID-19 pandemic by stepping up support for vaccines for all people, everywhere.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday appealed for wealthier countries to delay vaccinating younger people against COVID-19 and instead donate those doses to the COVAX global vaccine solidarity initiative.

Amidst an “unacceptably high plateau” in COVID-19 cases and deaths globally, the UN health agency chief on Monday shone a light on last week’s death toll that totalled almost 90 thousand people and 5.4 million reported cases.

The roll-out of vaccinations to prevent COVID-19 infections rising in the Maldives is a good example of “vaccine equity in action” according to Catherine Haswell, the UN Resident Coordinator for the Indian Ocean island nation.