Dr. Bruce Aylward, one of the WHO's top officials, warned that in such a scenario, the SARS-Cov-2 epidemic may "easily continue beyond 2022."

Only around 5% of Africa's population has received the two doses of vaccination, compared to 40% on most other continents.

The initial concept behind Covax, the United Nations-backed worldwide initiative to distribute vaccinations equally, was that all countries, even affluent ones, would be able to obtain vaccines through it.

However, after beginning to make bilateral deals directly with pharmaceutical firms to obtain their vaccinations, the majority of G7 countries opted to hold back.

Covid vaccinations have mostly been utilized in high- and upper-middle-income countries. Only 2.6 percent of worldwide dosages are delivered in Africa.

Oxfam and UNAids were among the organizations that chastised Canada and the United Kingdom for using Covax to get vaccinations for their populations.

Official statistics indicate that Pfizer sent 539,370 pills to the UK earlier this year, while AstraZeneca sent slightly under one million doses to Canada.

Aylward urged wealthy nations to give up their spots in the vaccination queue so that pharmaceutical corporations can focus on low-income countries.

Rich nations, he added, need to "conduct an assessment" of where they stand on contribution pledges made at summits like the G7 conference this summer.

He stated, "I can tell you we are not on track.  We need to speed it up (vaccine distribution) or this pandemic will last a year longer than it ought to be."

The United Kingdom has donated over 10 million vaccinations to developing countries and has committed to providing a total of 100 million.

According to recent data provided by the People's Vaccine coalition of NGOs, just one in seven of the doses given by pharmaceutical firms and affluent governments are reaching their recipients in the poorest countries.