United Nations, United States. The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, said yesterday that he is “very concerned” about the isolation of southern Africa, which has been affected by travel restriction measures in reaction to the new variant of the coronavirus, ómicron .
“The people of Africa cannot be blamed for the immorally low level of vaccination available in Africa, and they should not be penalized for identifying and sharing crucial scientific and health information with the world,” Guterres said in a statement.
“Now I am very concerned about the isolation of southern African countries due to the new travel restrictions due to Covid-19,” he said.
Countries around the world have reacted to the omicron variant by closing their borders, despite the fact that the strain has already reached Europe, Asia and North America.
Guterres called on governments to consider alternative measures such as traveler tests, to “avoid the risk of transmission while allowing travel and economic development.”
For their part, the G7 Health Ministers warned yesterday that the omicron variant is “highly transmissible” and requires “urgent action”, after an emergency meeting called by London.
“The international community faces the threat of a new highly communicable variant of Covid-19, which requires urgent action,” the ministers said in a joint statement after the meeting.
“Ministers praised South Africa’s exemplary work in detecting the variant and alerting others,” they added.
The G7 countries also “recognized the strategic importance of ensuring access to vaccines,” “preparing” countries to receive doses, providing “operational assistance, meeting our donation commitments, addressing misinformation about vaccines, and supporting the research and development “.
Sputnik and Pfizer, react
Russia announced yesterday, November 29, that it is developing a version of its Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19 specifically targeting its omicron variant, in the “unlikely event” that the current serum is not enough.
The Gamaleia Institute “has already begun to develop a new version of the omicron-adapted Sputnik vaccine,” the Russian Sovereign Fund, which funded the development of the vaccine, said in a statement.
For his part, the executive director of the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer, Albert Bourla, also revealed that they have already started the process to develop a new version of the vaccine to attack omicron.
“We will know the essentials of what we need to know in a few weeks,” he added.
Trials will be conducted to evaluate the efficacy of the current vaccine, developed with BioNTech, against omicron. But if “it protects less and we see the need to create a new vaccine, we have started working since Friday. We have made our first DNA model, the first stage in the development of a new vaccine,” he explained.
Pfizer has already created two new versions of its vaccine in less than a hundred days, against the delta and beta variants, which were ultimately not used. “In 95 days, we will have the new omicron vaccine,” Bourla said.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx