Lack of vaccine access can prolong pandemic – Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday warned that unequal global access to coronavirus vaccines risks protracting the pandemic and resulting in continued hotspots around the world.

Putin gave the warning in his virtual address to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“As we can see, mass vaccination today is accessible mostly to those who live in developed countries.

“At the same time, there are hundreds of millions of people in our world who cannot even hope to get such protection.

“In reality, such inequality could result in a common threat because the pandemic will drag on and uncontrolled epicenters will remain,” Putin said.

The president went on to back the development of a streamlined system of disease monitoring to avert such future outbreaks.

“We need to learn the lessons from the current situation to come up with measures to make the global system for monitoring the emergence of such diseases more effective,” Putin said.

The Russian leader said that the era of protracted attempts to build the unipolar world order had come to an end.

“It is clear that an era associated with attempts to build the centralised, unipolar world order is over.

“The reality is that there are truly different sides to development in the world, with distinctive political systems, political models, social institutions, and today it is extremely important to create many mechanisms for coordinating the interests.

“The diversity is natural,” Putin said.