GENEVA — “Of the 128 million vaccine doses administered so far, more than three quarters of those vaccinations are in just 10 countries that account for 60 percent of the global GDP,” according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

“As of February 10, almost 130 countries, with 2.5 billion people, are yet to administer a single dose,” according to a press release from WHO and UNICEF. “This self-defeating strategy will cost lives and livelihoods; give the virus further opportunity to mutate and evade vaccines; and will undermine a global economic recovery.

“UNICEF and WHO – partners for more than 70 years – call on leaders to look beyond their borders and employ a vaccine strategy that can actually end the pandemic and limit variants.

“Health workers have been on the frontlines of the pandemic in lower- and middle-income settings and should be protected first so they can protect us.

“COVAX participating countries are preparing to receive and use vaccines. Health workers have been trained, cold chain systems primed. What’s missing is the equitable supply of vaccines.

“To ensure that vaccine rollouts begin in all countries in the first 100 days of 2021, it is imperative that:
• Governments that have vaccinated their own health workers and populations at highest risk of severe disease share vaccines through COVAX so other countries can do the same.
• The Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, and its vaccines pillar COVAX, is fully funded so that financing and technical support is available to lower- and middle-income countries for deploying and administering vaccines. If fully funded, the ACT Accelerator could return up to US$ 166 for every dollar invested.
• Vaccine manufacturers allocate the limited vaccine supply equitably; share safety, efficacy and manufacturing data as a priority with WHO for regulatory and policy review; step up and maximize production; and transfer technology to other manufacturers who can help scale the global supply.

“We need global leadership to scale up vaccine production and achieve vaccine equity.

“COVID-19 has shown that our fates are inextricably linked. Whether we win or lose, we will do so together.”

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In making the announcement, Prime Minister Andrew Holness said that the government’s priority is making sure that the healthcare system is not overwhelmed.

“We cannot dedicate the entire capacity of our healthcare system to COVID-19 alone. There are other critical illnesses and events to which our healthcare professionals have to continue to respond,” Holness said.

He also pointed out that three of the country’s biggest hospitals, the Kingston Public Hospital, Spanish Town Hospital in St Catherine and the May Pen Hospital in Clarendon are all above 90% capacity.

Before the curfew announcement, these same sentiments were shared by the Former President of the Nurses Association of Jamaica, Carmen Johnson, who said that wards and isolation areas in hospitals across the country are now full, as hospitalizations are increasing.

The President of the Medical Association of Jamaica, Dr. Andrew Manning also stated that the healthcare system was approaching the point of over-capacity.

“In the blink of an eye, we could reach a stage where people come to the hospitals for treatment and we have nowhere to put them. We’re not far from that,” he said on Nationwide Radio on February 9.

In the meantime, the Prime Minister has warned that the police will be enforcing the curfew in a more vigorous manner. Holness urged Jamaicans to take the virus more seriously and to display a greater sense of personal responsibility.

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(CNN) The number of new Covid-19 cases reported across the globe has declined for a fourth week in a row, according to data from the World Health Organization, offering a glimmer of hope that the world is turning a corner in its efforts to contain the pandemic.

The number of Covid-19 deaths reported worldwide decreased for the second week running, with 88,000 new deaths reported last week, a 10% drop compared to the previous week, according to WHO.

More than 3.1 million new cases of Covid-19 were reported around the world last week, the WHO said in its weekly epidemiological update. That was a 17% decline from the previous week and the lowest number of cases worldwide since the week of October 26, 2020.

“Although there are still many countries with increasing numbers of cases, at the global level, this is encouraging,” the weekly update said.

The United States accounted for the highest number of new Covid-19 cases, with 871,365. However, this figure represented a 19% decline in cases from the previous week, according to WHO data.

Brazil, France, Russia and the United Kingdom were also among the nations reporting the highest number of new cases worldwide, the WHO noted, although all of them saw a decrease compared to figures from the previous week.

Of all the regions, compared to WHO’s previous weekly update, Africa saw the greatest decline in cases, at 22%, while the Eastern Mediterranean saw the smallest, at 2%.

Overall, new cases in the Americas accounted for more than half of all new cases worldwide, with more than 1.5 million new cases and more than 45,000 new deaths.

Globally, there have been almost 107 million Covid-19 cases, and more than 2.3 million deaths from the virus, since the start of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University figures.

Many countries are hoping that coronavirus vaccines will offer a way out of the crisis.

But while some countries have already administered millions of doses, about 130 countries — home to some 2.5 billion people — are yet to administer a single dose, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a briefing Friday.

Early data this week showing that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine may provide only “minimal protection” against mild to moderate illness caused by the coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa has dented optimism in some quarters.

The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is cheaper and easier to transport and store than some of the other vaccines approved for use to date and, as such, has been tipped to play a key role in combating the pandemic in low and middle-income countrys

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