OREANDA-NEWS. The World Health Organization (WHO) said the international COVAX universal vaccination mechanism had to be postponed due to the "vaccine nationalism" of the United States and other wealthy countries. This was reported by the Financial Times.

The United States, as well as the United Kingdom and Japan, did not join the program at the proposed time and preferred bilateral vaccine supply contracts with international corporations. For this reason, the deadline for their entry into COVAX has shifted by almost three weeks - from August 31 to September 18, and the date when participants make the first payments was postponed to October 9.

With the help of an international program, WHO planned to distribute 2 billion doses of the vaccine worldwide by the end of 2021. Poor countries, according to the plan, will get the vaccine thanks to funding from the wealthier.

Prior to that, the WHO said that nationalism was a factor that led to the intensification of the coronavirus pandemic. First of all, this affected the distribution of resources, and now it can affect the effectiveness of the distribution of the vaccine - “vaccine nationalism” is a great danger.

According to the Johns Hopkins Institute, more than 25 million cases of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection have been recorded in the world. Because of the pneumonia caused by it COVID-19, 863.5 thousand patients died. More than 17.3 million patients have been cured.