Cape Town - The Covid-19 pandemic has killed one million people worldwide since January, the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Thursday.
WHO is calling on governments to speed up vaccination as one-third of the world's population remains unvaccinated.
“We have passed the tragic milestone of one million deaths from Covid-19 since the beginning of the year,” Tedros told a news conference.
He called on governments in all countries to redouble their efforts to vaccinate all health workers, the elderly and others most at risk, in order to achieve 70% vaccination coverage for the entire population.
In January of this year, WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and their partners created the Covid Vaccine Delivery Partnership (CoVDP) to facilitate the distribution of doses in 34 countries with less than 10% coverage, all but six in Africa, said the global health authority.
Tedros said that only 10 countries still have less than 10% coverage.
“However, there is still much to do,” he said.
According to the WHO boss, one-third of the world population is still not vaccinated, including two-thirds of health workers and three-quarters of the elderly in low-income countries.
Covid-19 Update - Africa
According to the WHO African Region, 173 228 deaths have been recorded, while over 8.5 million cumulative cases have been reported in the WHO Africa Region.
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