Despite hopes that by now the pandemic would be under control, the head of the UN’s health agency told the G20 leading industrialized nations Health Ministers Meeting in Rome on Sunday that “the opposite is true”.

The global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines is progressing at “two alarmingly different speeds”, UN agency leaders said in a statement on Friday, noting that less than two per cent of adults are fully vaccinated in most low-income countries compared to almost 50 per cent in high-‑income nations. 

 The head of the UN health organization called on Wednesday for a moratorium on COVID-19 vaccine boosters until “at least the end of September” to enable the world’s most vulnerable people to be inoculated.

The role of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in promoting development has become “even more critical” as a way of guiding and informing the COVID-19 pandemic response worldwide, Collen Vixen Kelapile said on Friday, speaking for the first time as the UN body’s president.