<div class="at-above-post addthis tool" data-url="https://www.metro.us/who-bilateral-covid-19-vaccine/"></div>(Reuters) – Countries should not agree bilateral deals that undermine the international COVAX COVID-19 vaccine procurement facility, but they also have a responsibility to vaccinate frontline workers swiftly, WHO Europe Director Hans Kluge said on Thursday. Recent days have seen some European countries looking at securing jabs from Russia or China that do not yet […]<! AddThis Advanced Settings above via filter on get the excerpt ><! AddThis Advanced Settings below via filter on get the excerpt ><! AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get the excerpt ><! AddThis Share Buttons above via filter on get the excerpt ><! AddThis Share Buttons below via filter on get the excerpt ><div class="at-below-post addthis tool" data-url="https://www.metro.us/who-bilateral-covid-19-
WHO: bilateral COVID-19 vaccine deals not good for COVAX reuters.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from reuters.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Nearly two months after the European Union started its vaccination campaigns, four out of six countries in the Western Balkans have yet to begin.
With climbing coronavirus cases and no clear timeline on when vaccines from the COVAX mechanism and EU procurement scheme will be delivered, many countries have been looking towards China and Russia for solutions.
The moves come as wealthy nations have been criticised for taking the bulk of this year’s vaccine supply.
Israel has the highest number of inoculations in the world per capita, followed by the UAE, the UK, Bahrain, the US and EU member states Italy, Germany and France.
The European head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has said he is “concerned” over whether Covid-19 vaccines will prove effective against new virus variants. “The virus still has the upper hand on the human being,” WHO Europe Director Hans Kluge told the AFP news agency on Friday.
Updated Feb 06, 2021 | 12:34 IST
Researchers in the UK have launched a new trial that will see if mixing different COVID-19 vaccines can offer protection against the virus, including the new variants of COVID-19. Combining COVID-19 vaccine shots: Will it protect us against new variants of coronavirus? | Photo Credit: iStock Images
Key Highlights
Researchers in the UK have launched a clinical trial to see if mixing different COVID-19 vaccines could boost immune response
The Com-Cov study would look at 800 volunteers aged 50 or older who have not yet received the COVID-19 vaccine shot
The trial will test participants’ immune responses to receiving one shot of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and one shot of Pfizer-BioNTech jab