The novel coronavirus pandemic is at a very dangerous stage at the moment, despite the global community’s successes in fighting it, the World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday.
"While we have progress in controlling the pandemic, it remains in a very dangerous phase," the UN health agency chief said at a meeting of the ACT Accelerator Facilitation Council.
In the current situation, "the only way out is to support countries in the equitable distribution of PPE [personal protective equipment], tests, treatments and vaccines," he noted.
Ghebreyesus added that states with sufficient instruments to fight the novel coronavirus have already started to ease pandemic-related restrictions. "Meanwhile, countries without access to sufficient supplies are facing waves of hospitalizations and death," he added.
The WHO director general also raised the issue during another event on Tuesday, while attending the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) High-Level Political Forum. In his address, Ghebreyesus noted "steep epidemic" in African, Asian and American countries.
"We have to learn the lessons of COVID-19," he said, calling upon the global community "to prepare for the next one."
The international partnership named the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, or ACT-Accelerator, was officially launched on April 24 by the WHO, the EU, France, and philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates. As the WHO explained, the new initiative "is a unique partnership of many of the world’s international health organizations who have come together to share, and build on, individual expertise to create a powerful global solution that will ensure equity in access to tests, vaccines, treatments across the world with one goal: to reduce the burden of the COVID-19.".
