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STORY: WHO / COVID-19 UPDATE
TRT: 3:59
SOURCE: WHO
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH /NATS
DATELINE: 5 JANUARY 2021, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
1. Close up, WHO Seal
2. Wide shot, press room
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General:
" To break chains of transmission, we must identify and find those who are infected, provide the care they need and help them truly isolate safely. We are in a race to prevent infections, bring cases down, protect health systems and safe lives while rolling out highly effective and safe vaccines to high-risk populations. This is not easy - these are the hard miles we must tread together. But if we act together, we can win both races and get ahead of the virus while also limiting the opportunity for the virus to mutate further and threaten the health tools we currently have."
4. Wide shot, press room
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General:
" One year on from WHO issuing its first Disease Outbreak News report about this virus, more than 30 countries have started vaccinating their high-risk populations with various COVID-19 vaccines. The scientific community has set a new standard for vaccine development. Now the international community must set a new standard for access. "
6. Wide shot, press room
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General:
" We owe it morally to health workers everywhere who have been fighting this pandemic around the clock for the best part of a year, to vaccinate them all as soon as possible. People must come first over short-term profits. It’s in countries self-interest to shun vaccine nationalism. Vaccinating health workers and those at high risk of serious disease is the fastest way to stabilize health systems, ensure all essential health services are up and running and that a truly global economic recovery can take place. "
8. Wide shot, press room
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Alejandro Cravioto, Chair of the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE):
"And today we met to look into the approval of the WHO emergency use listing of the Pfizer BioNTech mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. "
10. Wide shot, press room
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Alejandro Cravioto, Chair of the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE):
" In this sense, in general, for the use of this vaccine, we do recommend that we use two doses with a space interval of 21 to 28 days. However, a country might need to use the vaccine in a different way for many different reasons. And that is something that competes them to a local decision, which goes beyond the recommendations that we're able to make at this point. "
12. Wide shot, press room
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Kate O'Brien, Director, WHO Department of Immunizations, Vaccines and Biologicals:
"There is no recommending body. There is no entirety of the evidence that tells us the clear and full answer to these policy questions. And, and this is the nature of policymaking, is that we must make recommendations based on imperfect data and any particular group of people in a particular setting of epidemiology and disease transmission are going to collectively come to sometimes exactly the same decision of weighing the risks and the benefits, and sometimes some adjustments to those decisions in one particular country, another particular country with different environments that they're making those in. "
14. Close up, WHO seal
“Vaccinating health workers and those at high risk of serious disease is the fastest way to stabilize health systems,” said the WHO’s Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus, as more than 30 countries have started vaccinating their high-risk populations with various COVID-19 vaccines.
"We owe it morally to health workers everywhere who have been fighting this pandemic around the clock for the best part of a year, to vaccinate them all as soon as possible’” Dr Tedros said at the press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday. “People must come first over short-term profits. It’s in countries self-interest to shun vaccine nationalism.”
He also said "to break chains of transmission, we must identify and find those who are infected, provide the care they need and help them truly isolate safely. We are in a race to prevent infections, bring cases down, protect health systems and safe lives while rolling out highly effective and safe vaccines to high-risk populations. This is not easy - these are the hard miles we must tread together. But if we act together, we can win both races and get ahead of the virus while also limiting the opportunity for the virus to mutate further and threaten the health tools we currently have."
Dr Alejandro Cravioto, Chair of the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) announced “today we met to look into the approval of the WHO emergency use listing of the Pfizer BioNTech mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. "
Dr Cravioto also explain the WHO guidance “for the use of this vaccine, we do recommend that we use two doses with a space interval of 21 to 28 days.”
A country might need however, “to use the vaccine in a different way for many different reasons,” said Cravioto but added that that decision “goes beyond the recommendations that we're able to make at this point. "
