World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says available evidence suggests new variants have substantially increased transmission globally.
And he adds that that means the risks have increased for people who are not protected, which is most of the world’s population.
Dr Adhanom said right now, the virus was moving faster than the global distribution of vaccines.
In his COVID-19 media briefing on Monday, he alluded to his remark made at the G7 Summit last Saturday where he said that to end the pandemic, the shared goal must be to vaccinate at least 70 per cent of the world’s population by the time the G7 met again in Germany next year.
“To do that, we need 11 billion doses. The G7 and G20 can make this happen,” Dr Adhanom said.
The WHO chief welcomed the support expressed by the G7 for WHO, the ACT Accelerator and the idea of a treaty on pandemic preparedness and response; and also the announcement that G7 countries would donate 870 million vaccine doses, primarily through COVAX.
“This is a big help, but we need more, and we need them faster,” Dr Adhanom said.
“More than 10,000 people are dying every day. During this press conference alone, more than 420 people will die.
“These communities need vaccines, and they need them now, not next year.
“There are enough doses of vaccines globally to drive down transmission and save many lives, if they are used in the right places, for the right people.
“Health workers and those most at risk must be given priority over those at low risk.”
Dr Adhanom said in G7 countries, high vaccination rates had helped to bring cases and deaths from COVID-19 to near record lows.
“But most countries continue to rely solely on the public health and social measures that have been the backbone of the response to date.”
Dr Adhanom said public health and social measures were effective against all variants.
However, he added that the emergence of more transmissible variants meant public health and social measures may need to be more stringent and applied for longer, in areas where vaccination rates remain low.
“But while we can test vaccines in laboratories or with randomised controlled trials, it is not so easy to test the effect of public health and social measures. Because countries typically use a range of measures at the same time, disentangling the precise impact of each individual measure can be challenging.”
He said the effectiveness of public health and social measures was also subjected to the level of adherence by a population, and the commitment of governments to support them.