The whole world must be vaccinated to stop new Covid variants from developing, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday, APA reports citing The Guardian.

In an interview with Times Radio, the WHO’s spokesperson Margaret Harris said:

“What’s really going to have an effect on transmission for all of us is making sure there is as little virus as possible circulating around the world. The most high priority groups are those that are exposed to the virus all the time, healthcare workers, yet only one in 10 are vaccinated in Africa currently.

We’re in such a bad place in much of the world, we’re going to see more variants develop, we’re going to see more transmission, and even if magically the vaccine protected one population as effectively as we hoped a variant then could develop and undo all of that work.”

She also said, however, that vaccines alone would not be able to lift the world out of the pandemic:

“The problem is focusing on one thing, the vaccine isn’t going to get us out of this. We really have to do other measures.

We have got to be serious about not crowding. We have still got to be looking at wearing the masks, when you’re indoors particularly.”

Source: Azeri-Press News Agency