WHO / COVID-19 UPDATE

STORY: WHO / COVID-19 UPDATE
TRT: 5:04
SOURCE: WHO
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH /NATS

DATELINE: 26 MARCH 2021, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

SHOTLIST:

1.Wide shot, podium with speakers in press room
2.SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General:
"COVAX is ready to deliver, but we can’t deliver vaccines we don’t have. As you know, bilateral deals, export bans, vaccine nationalism and vaccine diplomacy have caused distortions in the market, with gross inequities in supply and demand. Increased demand for vaccines has led to delays in securing tens of millions of doses that COVAX was counting on."
3.Wide shot, podium with speakers in press room
4.SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General:
"COVAX needs 10 million doses immediately as an urgent stop-gap measure so these 20 countries can start vaccinating their health workers and older people within the next two weeks. So today I’m asking countries with doses of vaccines that have WHO Emergency Use Listing to donate as many doses as they can to help us meet that target. And I’m asking manufacturers to help ensure these countries can rapidly donate those doses."
5.Wide shot, podium with speakers in press room
6.SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General:
"The more countries that donate A.S.A.P., the more doses we will have to share with countries who need them desperately. Sharing doses is a tough political choice, and governments need the support of their people. I’m encouraged by surveys in high-income countries showing widespread support for vaccine equity. 10 million doses is not much, and it’s not nearly enough."
7.Wide shot, podium with speakers in press room
8.SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General:
"What's happening now is it's not an export ban from India as far as we know. But as you may know, the number of cases in India is on the increase. So, they need more vaccines also to use locally in order to fight the increasing number of cases. So, that's understandable. But at the same time, we're already in discussion to keep a balance so that they can use locally, but at the same time continue to provide other countries vaccines from the Serum Institute of India."
9.Wide shot, podium with speakers in press room
10.SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Katherine O'Brien, Director, Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals, WHO: "We certainly are not recommending that people test individuals before giving vaccine to determine whether or not they have had COVID before. If somebody has known that they've had COVID disease, they could make an individual decision to delay the receipt of the vaccine if it's in short supply in their communities so that somebody else could go first. But we really just don't have enough information on the variants to understand whether that's an optimum strategy or not."
11.Wide shot, podium with speakers in press room
12.SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, COVID-19 Technical Lead, Health Emergencies Programme, WHO: "We are seeing signs of increasing transmission around the world. And there's a number of factors that are associated with this. We are not out of this pandemic. The pandemic is not over. I know we are over it, but it is not over us. We are still in the acute phase of this pandemic where in many parts of the world, the virus is still in control of our lives. We are not in control of the virus. That is not true all over the world. Some countries have actually shown that we can control COVID with the tools at hand with the addition of vaccination. But in fact, some countries have actually controlled COVID without vaccination, yet."
13.Wide shot, podium with speakers in press room
14.SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, COVID-19 Technical Lead, Health Emergencies Programme, WHO: "And I think it's important to remind everyone that we know a lot about this virus. We know about how it spreads, and it really is a factor of our mixing patterns. When we see people mixing and increasing the number of contacts that they have, if people are spending a long amount of time together, if they're mixing with more individuals, more families, the virus will take an opportunity to spread. So, we have seen with some holidays, we certainly saw this over December, January holidays, where people had increased the amount of mixing that they had with other families, we saw transmission increase dramatically in a number of countries"
15.Med shot, WHO seal

STORYLINE:

“Bilateral deals, export bans, vaccine nationalism and vaccine diplomacy have caused distortions in the market, with gross inequities in supply and demand,” the WHO chief, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus said on Friday and asked those “countries with doses of vaccines that have WHO Emergency Use Listing to donate as many doses as they can to help us meet that target.”

"COVAX is ready to deliver, but we can’t deliver vaccines we don’t have,” Dr Tedros sad. “Increased demand for vaccines has led to delays in securing tens of millions of doses that COVAX was counting on."

WHO’s chief did recognize that “sharing doses is a tough political choice, and governments need the support of their people,” but has underlined that "COVAX needs 10 million doses immediately as an urgent stop-gap measure.”

Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, COVID-19 Technical Lead of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme said “we are still in the acute phase of this pandemic where in many parts of the world, the virus is still in control of our lives.”

“Some countries have actually shown that we can control COVID with the tools at hand with the addition of vaccination. But in fact, some countries have actually controlled COVID without vaccination, yet," Dr Kerkhove said.