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COVID ain't over
We're not done with the pandemic — yet.
In the US, infections are up five-fold from a year ago, although both hospitalizations are down.
Although COVID will likely become endemic sometime this year in some parts of the world, the virus will still rage on everywhere else.
China's zero-COVID strategy is having a tremendous cost, while barely 17.4% of Africans are vaccinated. That bodes well for new variants.
Meanwhile, rich countries keep hoarding jabs, now also against monkeypox. Did we not learn anything after more than two years?
Watch the GZERO World episode: How depoliticizing the US health response will save lives (COVID isn't over)
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Should Putin get a Nobel in Medicine for ending talk of COVID?
José Manuel Barroso, chair of Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, is having a hard time these days convincing donors to cough up cash for 600 million vaccine doses to serve as a "buffer" for the next COVID wave.
But he's not surprised. Why? Because many people already think the pandemic is over. And for that, he credits Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has diverted global attention away from COVID with his invasion of Ukraine.
During a livestream discussion on equitable vaccine distribution hosted by GZERO Media in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Barroso proposed giving Putin this year's Nobel Prize for Medicine because apparently he's "made COVID disappear" in the media.
While wealthy nations with access to vaccines have already moved on, the former Portuguese PM warned that there's still a problem with getting jabs into people's arms in the rest of the world.
We need to finish the job, he said, hoping that donor fatigue "will not prevent us from doing what it should be done."