Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, gave an optimistic New Year’s address to the public, saying he expected the coronavirus pandemic to end in 2022 if all countries in the world fight the spread of infection. This is reported by the BBC.
The WHO chief called on world leaders to abandon narrow nationalism and vaccine hoarding, which he said were hampering the fight against the pandemic.
“Narrow nationalism and vaccine hoarding by some countries have undermined equity and created ideal conditions for the emergence of the Omicron strain, and the longer inequalities persist, the greater the risk of the virus evolving, which we cannot prevent or anticipate,” Ghebreyesus said.
WHO has also unveiled a key target for this year – to vaccinate 70% of the world’s population by July 2022.
As of 1 January, only 49% of the world’s citizens had been fully immunized against COVID-19 (more than 9 billion vaccinations have been given).