Geneva: Even as globally, newly-reported cases of COVID-19 and deaths respectively declined for 8 weeks and 7 weeks in a row, the rate of decline in COVID-19 cases most regions has slowed, and every region has countries that are seeing a rapid increase in cases and deaths, the World Health Organization warned here on June 21, 2021.
It stated that in Africa, the number of cases and deaths increased by almost 40% in the past week, and in some countries the number of deaths tripled or quadrupled.“There are several reasons for these increases, including the increased spread of variants of concern, more social mixing, ineffective use of public health and social measures and vaccine inequity,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists here. He reiterated that WHO’s primary focus remains supporting countries to suppress transmission, save lives and end this pandemic, and added: “At the same time, we must all use this opportunity to prepare for the future, by building capacities for our children and their children.”
WHO pointed out that new infections and deaths remain high globally. Last week, more than 2.5 million cases and almost 64 thousand deaths were reported. “That’s 250 cases and six deaths every minute, that we know of,” Dr. Ghebreyesus said.
While a handful of countries have high vaccination rates and are now seeing lower numbers of hospitalisations and deaths, other countries in Africa, the Americas and Asia are now facing steep epidemics.
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While claiming that these cases and deaths are largely avoidable, WHO attributed them to the inequitable access to vaccines that has demonstrated that in a crisis, low-income countries cannot rely on vaccine-producing countries to supply their needs.
“We have seen it before with HIV, when people in low- and middle-income countries couldn’t access lifesaving antiretroviral treatment. We have seen it with diabetes, where insulin is priced high despite having been around for more than a century,” Dr. Ghebreyesus said. According to him the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that relying on a few companies to supply global public goods is limiting, and dangerous.
He stressed on the need to enhance local production of health products and referred to WHO’s repeated call for the sharing of know-how, technology and licenses, and the waiving of intellectual property rights, to boost manufacturing.
He also referred to the World Health Assembly adopting a landmark resolution on strengthening local production of medicines and other health technologies to improve access, just a few weeks ago. “And today, I joined the World Local Production Forum, which aims to strengthen production capacity where it exists, and to build it where it is lacking,” he said. He also pointed out that in April, 2021, WHO had issued a call for expressions of interest to establish technology transfer hubs for COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.
“Following our call for expressions of interest, we received more than 50 proposals, about half of which were from companies or institutions interested in receiving technology, and half were interested in providing the technology, or acting as the training hub, or both. Today I am delighted to announce that WHO is in discussions with a consortium of companies and institutions to establish a technology transfer hub in South Africa,” he said.
Tech-transfer hubs are training facilities where manufacturers from low- and lower-middle income countries can receive training in how to produce certain vaccines, and the relevant licenses to do so. mRNA technology has been in development for decades, and is the basis for at least two safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines. It’s potentially easier to scale than other vaccine technologies and could be faster and easier to adapt to variants of concern.
“We are now in negotiations with several companies that have indicated interest in providing their mRNA technology to the hub. This selection will be based on how advanced the technology is, in terms of clinical efficacy data, and on the terms under which the company is willing to share its technology,” Dr. Ghebreyesus said, adding that in the coming weeks, WHO will continue to assess proposals for other tech-transfer hubs for mRNA and other technology platforms.
“It’s important to emphasise that this is an important step that will yield results in the medium-term. In the short-term, we need to do everything possible to increase the equitable production and distribution of vaccines, through COVAX,” he said.
– global bihari bureau
