The World Health Organization (WHO) announced an initiative to vaccinate 40 per cent of the population of every country against COVID-19 by the end of 2021 and 70 per cent by mid-2022, by prioritising vaccine delivery to low-income countries, particularly those in Africa.

“Today, the WHO is launching the Strategy to Achieve Global COVID-19 Vaccination by mid-2022,” Xinhua news agency quoted WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as saying at a press briefing here on Thursday. “The strategy outlines the road we must all take together to achieve our targets of vaccinating 40 per cent of the population of every country by the end of this year, and 70 per cent by middle of next year.” According to Tedros, achieving these targets will require at least 11 billion vaccine doses, which is an allocation problem instead of a supply problem.