World Health Organisation

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Friday urged countries to supply more vaccines to the global fair-access scheme Covax.

The international distribution of Covid vaccines remains vastly uneven.

Since the first vaccines were approved in December, wealthier countries have bought up most of the supply.

Many are racing to vaccinate as much of their population as possible.

The panel, set up by the World Health Organization, said the combined response of the WHO and global governments was a "toxic cocktail".

The WHO should have declared a global emergency earlier than it did, its report said, adding that without urgent change the world was vulnerable to another major disease outbreak.

More than 3.3 million people around the world have now died of Covid.

While the US and Europe are beginning to ease restrictions and resume some aspects of pre-pandemic life, the virus is still devastating parts of Asia.

That is despite several European countries and Australia limiting its use because of safety concerns.

In Australia, the Pfizer vaccine is now the preferred option for people under 50, Britain is offering an alternative for those under 30, while France and Belgium recommend AstraZeneca be given to those 55 and over.

European regulators said earlier this month they had found a possible link between AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine and a rare blood clotting problem that led to a small number of deaths.

The number of new deaths from the coronavirus levelled off after a six-week decrease, with just over 60,000 new deaths reported.

Europe and the Americas continued to account for nearly eight in 10 of all cases and deaths, while the only region to report a decline in fatalities was the Western Pacific, down nearly a third, compared to the previous week.

Infections rose notably in South East Asia, the Western Pacific, Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, according to the World Health Organisation’s Weekly Epidemiological Update.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was not fair for younger, healthy people in richer nations to get injections before vulnerable people in poorer states.

He said over 39 million vaccine doses had been given in 49 richer states - but one poor nation had only 25 doses.

Meanwhile, both the WHO and China were criticised for their Covid response.

An independent panel commissioned by the WHO said the UN public health body should have declared an international emergency earlier, and also rapped China for not taking public health measures sooner.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists at the regular Geneva briefing that progress on vaccines, in recent days, “gives us all a lift, and we can now start to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

He praised the United Kingdom’s emergency authorisation for the Pfizer/BioNTech rollout which is due to begin next week, describing it as “an important scientific step for the world”.

“I have seen the amnesia that seems to descend upon the world after a traumatic event, and that’s understandable,” Mike Ryan told a briefing in Geneva.

“But if we do this again like we did after SARS, like we did after H5N1, like we did after H1N1 pandemic, if we continue to ignore the realities of what emerging and dangerous pathogens can do to our civilization, then we are likely to experience the same or worse again within our lifetimes,” he said.

In its latest survey, the WHO found demand for mental health services was increasing as problems with bereavement, isolation, loss of income and fear mounted.

Mental health services in the region were chronically underfunded before the pandemic, it said, with less than 2 percent of national health budgets allocated to the sector.

But now, things had gotten worse, with most countries recording an increase in need and a severe disruption to what limited services are offered.

Europe reported 96,996 new cases, the highest total for the region ever recorded by the WHO.

Global deaths rose by 5514 to a total of 1.05 million.

The previous WHO record for new cases was 330,340 on 2 October. The agency reported a record 12,393 deaths on 17 April.

As a region, Europe is now reporting more cases than India, Brazil or the United States.

India reported 78,524 new cases, followed by Brazil at 41,906 and the United States with 38,904 new infections, according to the WHO, whose data lags the daily reports by each country.

 The seventy-first session of the WHO Regional Committee for the Western Pacific is being held online from 6 to 9 October 2020. On the opening day, WHO briefed countries on the COVID-19 situation in the Region and our work to support responses. Delegates shared updates on the current situation and needs.