WHO believes that everyone, everywhere who could benefit from safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines should have access as quickly as possible, starting with those at the highest risk of serious disease or death. 

WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization released two key documents to help guide the allocation and prioritization of populations to receive COVID-19 vaccines:

Six weeks ago, not long before the anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration that the novel coronavirus was an international health emergency, WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus point out the agency’s executive board.

The main international effort to secure equitable and affordable vaccine supplies for all countries, especially the poorest, falls under the auspices of covid, a joint initiative of a public-private global health partnership dedicated to increasing access to immunization in poor countries), the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the WHO.

Achieving that level of immunity will take time and effort well beyond vaccination programs; it will involve politics as much as science, political will as much as vaccination expertise, and recognition that a global pandemic requires a global response.

“Vaccine nationalism is not just morally indefensible. It is epidemiologically self-defeating and clinically counterproductive.