The ongoing vaccine crisis is a "scandalous inequity" that is perpetuating the Covid-19 pandemic, World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday. In his address at the WHO's 74th World Health Assembly, taking place online from May 24 to June 1, he said: "More than 75 per cent of all vaccines have been administered in just 10 countries." The fate of the rest of the world is controlled by a small group of countries that are making and buying the majority of the vaccines, he added..

If the vaccines had been distributed equitably, the doses "administered globally so far would have been enough to cover all health workers and older people". "We could have been in a much better situation," he lamented. Further, Ghebreyesus stated that countries vaccinating children and other low-risk groups now "do so at the expense of health workers and high-risk groups in other countries."