World Health Organization emergencies program head Michael Ryan said on Wednesday that countries with low COVID-19 vaccination rates, combined with the lifting of restrictions, was a “toxic mixture.”
Ryan said this was a time for extreme caution, but added that each nation had to make its own decisions about what precautions to take against COVID-19 and the lifting of restrictions.
Last week, the WHO also said that any COVID-19 vaccines it has authorized for emergency use should be recognized by countries as they open up their borders to inoculated travellers.
The move could challenge Western countries to broaden their acceptance of two apparently less effective Chinese vaccines, which the U.N. health agency has licensed but most European and North American countries have not.
In addition to vaccines by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna Inc., AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, the WHO has also given the green light to the two Chinese jabs, made by Sinovac and Sinopharm.
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