Working with AstraZeneca, SII and India to restart vaccine shipments: WHO official

‘Countries had to suspend the roll-out of their second doses’

The World Health Organization (WHO) is “urgently” trying to work with AstraZeneca, the Serum Institute of India (SII) as well as the Indian government to restart shipments of COVID-19 vaccines to countries that had to suspend the roll-out of the second dose amid a disruption in supplies, a senior official at the UN health agency said. “We have a huge number of countries that had to suspend the roll-out of their second doses of vaccines,” Bruce Aylward, Senior Adviser to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Friday at a press briefing. “Over 30 or 40 countries could have been targeted for the second doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines... [but they] will not be able to do that,” Mr. Aylward said.