The risk of COVID-19 outbreaks will remain even despite vaccinations. Kate O’Brien, head of the immunization department of the World Health Organization (WHO), said this in an interview with Lente.ru.
“Alas, a high proportion of the vaccinated population does not mean that we are all safe,” O’Brien said. The representative of WHO gave an example of measles. Even with high overall vaccination rates, outbreaks have continued to occur in certain subpopulations, she said.
“Rather than focusing on statistics, we must use our knowledge of the transmission of COVID-19 to develop a smart approach to both prevention and vaccination,” she said.
In early January, WHO Director General Tedros Adanom Ghebreyesus said that the number of people vaccinated from COVID-19 in the world exceeded the number of infected. According to him, this is a remarkable achievement in such a short time. On the other hand, most of these vaccinations were done in just 10 countries, which account for nearly 60 percent of world GDP. At the same time, almost 130 countries with a population of 2.5 billion people have not yet received even a single batch of doses.
The full text of the interview can be found here.