To end pandemic, vaccines need to be distributed fairly to all countries

IT is just over a year since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Covid-19 outbreak as a global pandemic. While the rate of infections is still a problem in many countries, not to mention the emergence of new variants of the virus that occur through mutations, there is some light at the end of the tunnel with the development and rollout of different types of vaccines.

In Singapore, community cases are down to zero on most days in recent weeks, although there are still new imported cases - usually in the teens - on a daily basis. As at March 23, over 1.1 million vaccine doses have been administered here, with 310,000 people having completed both doses.

Globally, however, there have been several hiccups with the vaccination programme. One of the main problems, as flagged by the United Nations earlier this week, is how developed countries are creating their own "stockpile" of Covid-19 vaccines, which a concerned secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, has described as a "very unfair distribution" of vaccines around the world.