OUR pandemic her COVID-19 claimed the lives of 1 million people worldwide since the beginning of the year, World Health Organizationurging governments to speed up programs vaccination since a third of the world’s population has not yet been vaccinated against the new coronavirus.

“We have crossed the tragic mark of 1 million deaths due to Covid-19 since the beginning of the year,” WHO Director-General Dr Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference.

Tedros has asked all governments to step up their efforts to vaccinate all health workers, the elderly and other vulnerable groups in order to reach 70% of the population.

In January, WHO, UNICEF and other partners formed the Covid Vaccine Delivery (CoVDP) Alliance to facilitate dose distribution in 34 countries where vaccination coverage was less than 10%. All but six of these countries were in Africa. Today, vaccination coverage is still below 10% in only ten countries. “However, much remains to be done,” Tedros said.

According to the WHO Director-General, two-thirds of health workers and three-quarters of older people in poor countries have not yet been vaccinated.

According to the latest WHO statistics, the Covid-19 pandemic has caused 6.45 million deaths worldwide since the first cases were identified in Wuhan, China, in late 2019.

^{Source: APE-MEB, AFP.}