Geneva
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that decisions made by the governments and individuals in the coming days would be decisive.
On Wednesday, the United Kingdom authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for emergency use, becoming the first country to do so. It gave the country a jump in mass vaccination against COVID-19. The same day, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a large-scale voluntary inoculation program with domestically produced Sputnik V vaccine. “The pandemic still has a long way to run. And decisions made by leaders and citizens in the coming days will determine both the course of the virus in the short term and when this pandemic will ultimately end,” Tedros said.
The WHO chief further called on the public to be more patient and careful.”We know it has been a hard year and people are tired. … My personal asks to people is simple: please be careful, think of health workers and act for the greater good, because it will save lives and livelihoods,” Tedros added.
As of Friday, the death toll from COVID-19 in the world topped 1.494 million, with over 64.3 million cases of infection, according to the WHO dashboard. The Americas are leading with 27,438,341 cases.
