Even as the Delta variant is reported out of several countries, the World Health Organisation chief, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, cautioned that the variants were currently winning the race against the vaccines because of inequitable vaccine production and distribution.

“The world is at a perilous point in this pandemic,” he said, pointing to the tragic milestone of four million deaths from Covid-19, which, he added, most likely underestimated the overall toll.

While some countries were planning booster-shot rollouts and abandoning public health social measures, he pointed out that far too many countries were seeing a sharp spike in cases and hospitalisations, “compounded by fast moving variants and shocking inequity in vaccination”. This was leading to an acute shortage of oxygen, treatments and deaths in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America.

And the combination of factors also threatened the global economic recovery, he said, adding that it did not have to be this way. He called for countries to vaccinate 10 per cent of all its people by September and 40 per cent by the year-end. That would put the world on the path to vaccinating 70 per cent of its people by mid-2022.

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