Coronavirus live news: EU triggers Brexit article to stop vaccine flow from Northern Ireland to rest of UK

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus decried the skirmish in wealthy countries to secure large amounts of various vaccines against the coronavirus while few doses have yet to reach poorer nations.

“The pandemic has exposed and exploited the inequalities of our world,” he told journalists, warning that there now was “the real danger that the very tools that could help to end the pandemic – vaccines – may exacerbate those same inequalities.”

“Vaccine nationalism might serve short-term political goals. But it’s ultimately short-sighted and self-defeating,” he said.

The WHO co-leads the COVAX facility, which is working to procure vaccines and ensure doses are delivered equitably around the world. The facility expects to begin delivering doses within a few weeks, and Tedros said the aim was for vaccination of health workers and older people to be underway in all countries within the first 100 days of 2021.

Tedros urged the world avoid repeating past mistakes, pointing to the HIV/AIDS crisis, where wealthy countries acquired life-saving medicines nearly a decade before they became affordable in poorer countries.

He also pointed to the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009, when vaccines only reached poorer nations after the outbreak was over. “I don’t think that is a good history. It is bad history,” he said.