Positive News
The UN health chief declared Friday that positive results from coronavirus vaccine trials mean the world "can begin to dream about the end of the pandemic," but he said rich and powerful nations must not trample the poor and marginalised "in the stampede for vaccines."
In...
more... an address to the UN General Assembly's first high-level session on the pandemic, World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus cautioned that while the virus can be stopped, "the path ahead remains treacherous."
The pandemic has shown humanity at "its best and worst," he said, pointing to "inspiring acts of compassion and self-sacrifice, breathtaking feats of science and innovation, and heartwarming demonstrations of solidarity, but also disturbing signs of self-interest, blame-shifting and divisions." Referring to the current upsurge in infections and deaths, Tedros said without naming any countries that "where science is drowned out by conspiracy theories, where solidarity is undermined by division, where sacrifice is substituted with self-interest, the virus thrives, the virus spreads."
He warned in a virtual address to the high-level meeting that a vaccine "will not address the vulnerabilities that lie at its root" -- poverty, hunger, inequality and climate change, which he said must be tackled once the pandemic ends.
