THE CHIEF of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has slammed richer countries for hoarding doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press conference: “I need to be blunt. The world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure.”

“The price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries.”

The WHO director claimed that although certain countries and companies spoke about the importance of equal access to vaccines for everyone, their behaviour did not match their actions.

He pointed out that some countries were going behind COVAX to secure vaccines for themselves, and driving up prices.

COVAX is a World Health Organisation initiative that hopes to ensure 2 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine are fairly distributed by the end of this year.

More than 39 million vaccine doses have been given out in the highest income countries. This is in stark contrast to just 25 doses that have been given out so far in one low-income country.

Companies who sought regulatory approval in high-income countries, rather than through the WHO were also part of the problem, the chief pointed out.

Worldwide, more than 2 million people have now died from COVID-19.

The United States, Brazil and India have recorded the highest number of deaths losing 399,000, 210,000 and 153,000 people respectively.

However yesterday many news outlets reported that the UK had the highest COVID-19 death rate in the world, following data from an Oxford University research platform.

Recently, the African Union announced that it had secured almost 300 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.

It was the largest type of agreement that the continent had made.

Africa hopes to vaccinate around 780 million people, and therefore needs 1.5 billion vaccine doses.