We must use this momentum to strengthen efforts to end the pandemicJakarta (ANTARA) - Indonesian Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi has reiterated the need to redouble efforts to promote global vaccine equality at the 8th COVAX Advance Market Commitment Engagement Group (AMC EG) meeting.
Marsudi remarked that the weekly cases and deaths due to COVID-19 had continued to decline in most regions of the world.
"We must use this momentum to strengthen efforts to end the pandemic," she noted in a statement received here, Wednesday.
Marsudi co-chaired the meeting on Tuesday with the Canadian International Development Minister and Ethiopian Health Minister.
Her mandate, as one of the Co-Chairs of COVAX AMC EG, was extended until the end of 2022.
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Marsudi emphasized at the meeting that the main priority currently is to ensure that all countries can achieve the vaccination targets set by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Efforts to equalize access to vaccines must be augmented, as vaccination rates in some countries had yet to reach 10 percent.
The minister also conveyed the importance of assisting countries to improve the capacity to conduct vaccinations.
The Omicron variant currently dominates the distribution of COVID-19 cases in the world, with 99.7-percent detection in the 427,152 specimens examined, the WHO stated at the meeting.
According to the WHO, the clinical impact of the Omicron variant was observed to be milder than that of the Delta variant, and the available vaccines were proved effective against Omicron.
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However, the WHO urged all countries to remain vigilant, as it had recorded the current death toll at the same level as it was during the Delta wave.
The result of studies on the effectiveness of vaccines also indicated that injections of booster doses of vaccines are 80-90 percent effective to prevent patients with severe symptoms, the WHO representative stated.
COVAX AMC is a global mechanism that aims to distribute free vaccines to 92 lower-middle-income and low-income countries.
Currently, 49 percent of the population of COVAX AMC countries have received at least one dose of the vaccine, while 39 percent of them were fully vaccinated.
As of March 11, 2021, Indonesia had received 34,631,500 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine through the COVAX AMC mechanism.
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Translator: Yuni Arisandy Sinaga, Sri Hary
Editor: Fardah Assegaf
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