WHO chief says poor nations gave 0.3 per cent of shots

The head of the World Health Organization says more than 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered globally but 82 per cent of them were given in high- and upper-middle-income countries.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says just 0.3 per cent of all vaccines administered so far were given to people in low-income countries.

“That's the reality,” Tedros told an online health conference hosted by Portugal on Thursday.


He said access to vaccines “is one of the defining challenges of the pandemic” and that public health is “the foundation of social, economic and political stability.”