WHO Committee Warns Pandemic 'Nowhere Near Finished' as Only 25 Percent of World Vaccinated

The World Health Organization (WHO) is continuing its plea for countries to share COVID-19 vaccines with lower-income nations because unvaccinated populations could give rise to more dangerous variants that are harder to control.

Only about 25 percent of the global population has had at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to a tracker maintained by Brown University. There are significant disparities between wealthier nations and lower-income ones, and while countries with high vaccination rates are returning to normal, the WHO warns that the health crisis isn't over.

"Despite national, regional and global efforts, the pandemic is nowhere near finished," a WHO emergency committee said on Thursday. "The committee recognized the strong likelihood for the emergence and global spread of new and possibly more dangerous variants of concern that may be even more challenging to control."

The coronavirus's mutating is nothing new and has been happening since the early months of the pandemic, but the more variants that arise, the increased likelihood there is for a variant to be even more infectious or deadly than previous ones. This created urgency in getting Americans vaccinated because, as Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explained, mutations occur when infections run wild.

Fortunately, vaccines have proved effective against the Delta variant, which is now the most prominent strain in the United States. But that may not always be the case.

"In a future where [the] U.S. is vaccinated but others are not, we could see a rise of variants that can infect, cause outbreaks here and other vaccinated places, requiring us to update our vaccines and vaccinate everyone again," Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, tweeted in January. " It's the nightmare scenario of a never-ending pandemic."

Nearly 70 percent of people in the United States have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, nearly three times more than the global average. The more people who are vaccinated against the coronavirus, the fewer people there are for mutations to find.

On Wednesday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, reiterated calls for the world to ramp up vaccination efforts. He's advocated for countries to donate unused doses before vaccinating children or reserving doses in case boosters are needed.

"The global gap in COVID-19 vaccine supply is hugely uneven and inequitable," Ghebreyesus said Monday. "Some countries and regions are actually ordering millions of booster doses before other countries have had supplies to vaccinate their health workers and most vulnerable."

Instead of preparing boosters, Ghebreyesus said, companies and countries should donate to COVAX, a vaccine-sharing program geared toward providing vaccines to low- and middle-income countries. Mike Ryan, head of the WHO's Health Emergencies Program, said people will "look back in anger" and "shame" if countries allow vulnerable people to die while using doses on booster shots.

The varying rates of vaccinations around the world have prompted varying responses to the pandemic, and countries with high vaccination rates have started reopening. This has enabled places like the United States to relax requirements for mask wearing and social distancing, and states with high vaccination rates haven't seen significant spikes in cases so far.

However, the WHO emergency committee noted that countries with limited access to vaccines are seeing "new waves of infections," an erosion of public trust and "growing resistance" to public health safety measures. It's also led to growing economic hardship and, in some cases, social unrest, according to the committee.

The lack of a globally coordinated response to the pandemic created a diversity of responses that have brought varying results. The WHO has floated the idea of an international pandemic treaty that would increase international cooperation in the event of a global health crisis.

"If the world continues down the same road, it will continue heading towards the same destination, which is an unsafe world, and another devastating pandemic is inevitable," Ghebreyesus said.

The director-general also noted that the emergency committee was frustrated at the "mischaracterization" that the pandemic was "coming to an end" when it is "nowhere near finished."

Newsweek reached out to the WHO for further comment but did not hear back before publication.