Health

Expert in humanitarian studies at the University of Geneva who has worked closely with the Afghan health ministry

12 Sep 2021 2 4

Wahid Majrooh

Inserted 2 years ago

“We are losing personnel, we are losing lives, and the morale and momentum we had. The crisis is very, very extensive.”

Former Health Minister in Afghanistan

12 Sep 2021 1 2

Magnus Heunicke

Inserted 2 years ago

“Daily life is basically back to normal, but that doesn't mean there won't be any danger down the road. The virus has mutated several times, so I can't make any guarantees. But with this many people vaccinated, we are well set.”

Denmark Minister of Health

10 Sep 2021 3 3

Hans Kluge

Inserted 2 years ago

“We should anticipate how to gradually adapt our vaccination strategy to endemic transmission and gather really precious knowledge about the impact of additional jabs.”

WHO’s regional director for Europe

10 Sep 2021 3 2

Mohammad Nabi Burhan

Inserted 2 years ago

“After living through decades of hardships, Afghans now face the ravages of a climate crisis, a global pandemic and internal displacement. Urgent international action is needed to support millions of people with the necessities of life through the coming months and Afghanistan's harsh winter.”

Acting secretary general of Afghan Red Crescent

07 Sep 2021 4 3

Jens Laerke

Inserted 2 years ago

“Basic services in Afghanistan are collapsing and food and other life-saving aid is about to run out.”

Spokesman for United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

06 Sep 2021 0 2

Young-rae Sohn

Inserted 2 years ago

“If we manage to stabilize the coronavirus situation during this month, we will make adjustments to the social distancing system in October which would bring us closer to pre-COVID-19 normalcy.”

Senior official from the Ministry of Health and Welfare of South Korea

05 Sep 2021 2 1

Gordon Brown

Inserted 2 years ago

“We are in a new 'arms' race - to get vaccines into people as quickly as possible - but this is an arms race where the West have a stranglehold on the vaccine supplies.”

Former Prime Minister of the UK and United Nations special envoy

05 Sep 2021 3 4

Andrew Noymer

Inserted 2 years ago

“What worries me the most is not where we're at, although that's bad enough, but where we're headed. I think the U.S. is still in for a doozy of a next six months. We haven't seen the effects yet of school reopening.”

Associate professor of public health at the University of California, Irvine

05 Sep 2021 3 2

Elizabeth Groenweghe

Inserted 2 years ago

“People ask us sometimes, 'What's the end goal here? You're not going to conquer Covid, and it's not going to go away forever.' And I think that really it's to get to a point where the level of community transmission is at least sustainable and not impacting our daily lives so negatively.”

Chief epidemiologist for the public health department in Kansas City

05 Sep 2021 2 2

John Swartzberg

Inserted 2 years ago

“The irony is that things got so good in May and most of June that all of us, including me, were talking about the end game. We started to enjoy life again. Within a very few weeks, it all came crashing down.”

Infectious disease specialist at the University of California, Berkeley

05 Sep 2021 2 1

Howard Njoo

Inserted 2 years ago

“If we continue on the path we are on now since reopening, we could expect to see a continued sharp increase in cases ... reaching levels not seen before in Canada during the pandemic.”

Cbc

Deputy Chief Public Health Officer at Public Health Agency of Canada

03 Sep 2021 3 2

Theresa Tam

Inserted 2 years ago

“This is a crucial moment. We have a window of opportunity to rapidly accelerate vaccine uptake and close the protection gap in younger age groups with the lowest vaccine coverage. There's no magic number [vaccination rate] except to say reach for the stars. I have a 100 per cent mark on that graph. That's where people should be aiming toward as much as possible. I believe that we can accelerate and I know that provinces are pulling all stops in different ways. While that is being rapidly analyzed, I would ask for caution and patience for a booster dose for the rest of the population because we haven't seen enough data, and based on the information we have at hand in Canada we're not seeing a lot of breakthrough infections.”

Cbc

Canada's Chief Public Health Officer

03 Sep 2021 5 4

Hans Kluge

Inserted 2 years ago

“Last week, there was an 11 percent increase in the number of deaths in the region - one reliable projection is expecting 236,000 deaths in Europe, by December 1. In the past six weeks, it [vaccination uptake] has fallen by 14 percent, influenced by a lack of access to vaccines in some countries and a lack of vaccine acceptance in others. Vaccine scepticism and science denial is holding us back from stabilising this crisis. It serves no purpose, and is good for no one.”

WHO’s regional director for Europe

30 Aug 2021 3 3

Anthony Fauci

Inserted 2 years ago

“I believe that mandating vaccines for children to appear in school is a good idea. We've done this for decades and decades, requiring polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis vaccinations.”

Top US infectious disease expert

29 Aug 2021 6 3

Linsey Marr

Inserted 2 years ago

“Delta is obviously much more transmissible and the vaccine helps protect against that, but it's not 100 per cent. So it almost puts us back where we were a year ago with a less transmissible virus and no vaccines. At the same time, it's not as upsetting as the first time around because we know what we need to do.”

Cbc

Expert on virus transmission at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va

28 Aug 2021 3 3

David Naylor

Inserted 2 years ago

“I'm really disappointed that some provinces have not moved forward with vaccine certificate programs. This isn't about civil liberties. It's like smoking in a crowded restaurant. Vaccine certificates are also a spur to those who are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated to get on with protecting themselves and others. One can only hope all the premiers eventually wake up to the harm they are doing by side-stepping this sensible measure.”

Cbc

Doctor who led the federal inquiry into Canada's national response to the 2003 SARS epidemic and now co-chairs the federal government's COVID-19 immunity task force

28 Aug 2021 3 2

Allison McGeer

Inserted 2 years ago

“Firstly, they [the unvaccinated] pose a direct risk of transmission, and while the vaccine is very effective at protecting you from serious illness and death - it's not 100 per cent. Nothing in life is 100 per cent. The second thing that unvaccinated people do is they increase the spread of coronavirus in the population. So if you release restrictions, unvaccinated people contribute substantially more to the growth of transmission in the community.”

Cbc

Medical microbiologist and infectious disease specialist at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital

28 Aug 2021 4 2

Dr Matshidiso Moeti

Inserted 2 years ago

“I think it is very difficult for us to talk about booster doses in Africa. We have not covered even 5 percent of the population yet with the initial vaccinations that are needed to slow down the spread of the virus and most importantly, stop what we think might be a fourth wave which is coming.”

WHO regional director for Africa

26 Aug 2021 1 2

Yasutoshi Nishimura

Inserted 2 years ago

“Critical cases have spiked suddenly and the medical system is in an extremely dire state.”

Japan's Economy Minister

25 Aug 2021 2 2

Tim Spector

Inserted 2 years ago

“It's bringing into focus this need for some action. We can't just sit by and see the protectiveness slowly waning whilst cases are still high and the chance of infection still high as well.”

Principal Investigator of the PREDICT studies and the ZOE COVID Study app. Researcher/Author on microbiome, nutrition & genomics.

25 Aug 2021 1 1

Michalis Giannakos

Inserted 2 years ago

“We, healthcare professionals, are not against the vaccination, and the vast majority of the unvaccinated have not yet had the vaccine because of fear. What we are against is compulsory vaccination, and we believe that the state should set up committees to talk face to face with employees and convince them to vaccinate.”

Balkaninsight

President of Panhellenic Federation of Employees in Public Hospitals (POEDIN)

24 Aug 2021 3 4

Vassilis Kikilias

Inserted 2 years ago

“Over 90 per cent of the patients in intensive care units have not been vaccinated. Workers who do not comply with restrictions can be legally suspended. Employers do have the right to know if workers are vaccinated or tested.”

Balkaninsight

Greek Minister for Health

24 Aug 2021 4 3

Cyril Cohen

Inserted 2 years ago

“It's true that Moderna has better protected people from infection, but the two vaccines are almost equivalent in effectiveness against severe disease. This is important so that our hospitals won't be overwhelmed. If you were to ask me two months ago when we had only 100 cases a day, I would have said we don't need to go with a booster. But in the meantime, we moved from 100 cases a day to 8,000 cases a day and I won't be surprised if in a couple more days we see more than 10,000. We had no choice but to give a booster shot. I would have preferred more data, but I think we made the right call.”

Vice dean of life sciences at Bar Ilan university and member of the Israeli health ministry’s coronavirus vaccine advisory board

23 Aug 2021 2 4

Chris Hipkins

Inserted 2 years ago

“Delta does raise some big questions that we're going to have to grapple with, you know less than a 24-hour period for someone getting it and passing it on to others … that's like nothing we've dealt with in this pandemic so far, and it does change everything. It does mean that all of our existing protections … start to look less adequate and less robust. As a result of that we are looking very closely at what more we can do there. At some point we will have to start to be more open in the future.”

New Zealand Minister for COVID-19 Response

22 Aug 2021 2 4

Rawan Hamadeh

Inserted 2 years ago

“There's huge need. There's a huge influx of patients that are coming in. There's a lot of trauma, limb fractures and traumatic injuries in most of the patients. It's completely crowded. The load of patients is very high. There isn't enough resources. There isn't enough medication, medical supplies or even human resources.”

Healthcare professional with Project Hope’s emergency response team in the southwestern city of Les Cayes

21 Aug 2021 1 2

Didier Reynders

Inserted 2 years ago

“I am pleased to see that the list of countries implementing a system based on the EU Digital COVID Certificate is growing steadily and we are setting standards internationally. This will help to facilitate safe travel, also beyond the borders of our Union. I welcome Ukraine, North Macedonia and Turkey in our Digital COVID Certificate system and look forward to more of our neighbours connecting soon.”

Europeanwesternbalkans

European Union Commissioner for Justice

20 Aug 2021 6 2

Kim Yoon

Inserted 2 years ago

“The average fatality rate of COVID-19 patients was previously 0.98 percent, but in line with the vaccine rollout, the figure fell to 0.18 percent last month, similar to that of the seasonal flu. We might look for possible ways to control the coronavirus similar to the flu. The government should stop counting the number of daily new infections, as this figure should not be the threshold for determining the level of the social distancing measures. Instead, quarantine resources should be poured into strengthening Korea's medical capacity for treating critically ill COVID-19 patients.”

Professor of health policy and management at Seoul National University

20 Aug 2021 2 3

Vili Beroš

Inserted 2 years ago

“In the last 14 days, out of 3,697 people who were tested positive, as many as 85.72 per cent were not vaccinated. Of the 221 hospitalized people, 87 per cent were not vaccinated. From June 1 to August 17, 254 people died and 80 per cent of the people who passed away were not vaccinated. We are witnessing an epidemic of the unvaccinated. The epidemic in Croatia undoubtedly affects the unvaccinated the most. The toxic combination of a relatively high proportion of unvaccinated and non-compliance measures can lead to an increase in the number of patients, new outbreaks and hospitalizations. The epidemic is exhausting. None of us are an island. How long we stay in orange or green depends on each of us.”

Balkaneu

Croatian Minister of Health

19 Aug 2021 2 2

Moon Jae-in

Inserted 2 years ago

“When it comes to the COVID-19 crisis - compared to any other advanced nation - our country is overcoming it in a stable manner. We will also surely prevail over this fourth wave fueled by the spread of the Delta variant. The inoculations are also approaching their target. In October, 70 percent of the total population will have received their second shots, and vaccination rate targets will be raised once more.”

President of South Korea

15 Aug 2021 5 3

Anthony Fauci

Inserted 2 years ago

“We believe sooner or later you will need a booster for durability. We are evaluating this on a day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month basis, looking at any of a number of studies - both international and domestic studies. We are preparing for the eventuality of doing that.”

Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

12 Aug 2021 4 3

Jacinda Ardern

Inserted 2 years ago

“We're simply not in a position to fully reopen just yet. When we move, we will be careful and deliberate, because we want to move with confidence and with as much certainty as possible.”

New Zealand Prime Minister

12 Aug 2021 2 2

Kim Woo-joo

Inserted 2 years ago

“The current social distancing plan was revised with the aim of relieving the socio-economic burden, so it is less effective in curbing the virus. The daily tally may climb to 3,000 unless stronger regulations are implemented. One of the most important goals of the vaccination drive is to prevent elderly people from falling into a critical condition and reducing the death rate among them. It seems appropriate to finish the second round of vaccinations for people aged 60 or older, and then proceed to those in their 50s. The first dose is insufficient to prevent Delta variant infections. Recent findings show that the variant is as twice as contagious than the original virus and more likely to cause severe illness.”

Infectious disease specialist at Korea University Guro Hospital

11 Aug 2021 2 3

Moon Jae-in

Inserted 2 years ago

“We cannot decide on the supply of vaccines on our own because we have relied on a few foreign pharmaceutical companies, but we will make the most use of the vaccines we have secured, and advance the timing of achieving our goal. The unstable supply of vaccines is a serious problem worldwide. We will need to speed up domestic vaccine development and make every effort to become a global vaccine production hub.”

President of South Korea

09 Aug 2021 3 4

Rochelle Walensky

Inserted 2 years ago

“Our models show that if we don't [vaccinate people], we could be up to several hundred thousand cases a day, similar to our surge in early January.”

Head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

07 Aug 2021 3 1

Vesko Drljača

Inserted 2 years ago

“This is the realization of the Agreement that was concluded at the end of July directly with the manufacturer Sinopharm. This Agreement has a special significance for the Federation of B&H and on that behalf, I would like to thank China and Sinopharm. Also, I would congratulate the FB&H Institute for Public Health.”

Balkaneu

Deputy Prime Minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina

06 Aug 2021 3 3

Elin Hoffmann Dahl

Inserted 2 years ago

“The fact that we are vaccinating healthy adults with a booster dose of COVID-19 vaccines is a short-sighted way of thinking. With the emergence of new variants, if we continue to leave the majority of the world unvaccinated, we will most definitely need adjusted vaccines in the future.”

Infectious diseases medical adviser to Medecins Sans Frontieres' access campaign

04 Aug 2021 5 3

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

Inserted 2 years ago

“I understand the concern of all governments to protect their people from the Delta variant. But we cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it. We need an urgent reversal from the majority of vaccines going to high-income countries to the majority going to low-income countries.”

Director-General of the World Health Organization

04 Aug 2021 7 3

David Montefiori

Inserted 2 years ago

“Frankly there's a severity that comes from this variant [Delta] that is a little more severe. It's not just easier to transmit, it makes you sicker.”

Director of the Laboratory for AIDS Vaccine Research and Development at Duke University Medical Center

02 Aug 2021 2 3

Rochelle Walensky

Inserted 2 years ago

“High viral loads suggest an increased risk of transmission and raised concern that, unlike with other variants, vaccinated people infected with Delta can transmit the virus.”

Head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

30 Jul 2021 5 2

Anthony Fauci

Inserted 2 years ago

“We're going in the wrong direction. If you look at the inflection of the curve of new infections… it is among the unvaccinated and since we have 50 percent of the country is not fully vaccinated, that's a problem - particularly when you have a variant like Delta which has this extraordinary characteristic of being able to spread very efficiently and very easily from person to person. If you are vaccinated, the vaccine is highly protective against the Delta variant, particularly against severe disease leading to hospitalisation and sometimes ultimately to death. It's really an outbreak among the unvaccinated … which is the reason why we're out there practically pleading with the unvaccinated people to go out and get vaccinated.”

Top US infectious disease expert

25 Jul 2021 4 4

Antony Blinken

Inserted 2 years ago

“As long as this virus is out there anywhere, replicating, we're going to see more variants, and those variants are going to come back and bite us as we're already experiencing with Delta. As we are pursuing every effort to get every American vaccinated, we are also engaged in the world.”

U.S. Secretary of State

23 Jul 2021 7 3

Rochelle Walensky

Inserted 2 years ago

“The Delta variant is more aggressive and much more transmissible than previously circulating strains. It is one of the most infectious respiratory viruses we know of, and that I have seen in my 20-year career.”

Head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

22 Jul 2021 2 1

Michael Baker

Inserted 2 years ago

“In New Zealand we have always looked to the UK for leadership when it comes to scientific expertise, which is why it's so remarkable that it is not following even basic public health principles.”

Professor of public health at the University of Otago and a member of the New Zealand ministry of health’s Covid-19 technical advisory group

16 Jul 2021 2 4

Clover Moore

Inserted 2 years ago

“Our two biggest cities have been failed by the federal government, which simply did not do the work to secure the vaccines we need.”

Mayor of Sydney

15 Jul 2021 0 4

Chris Whitty

Inserted 2 years ago

“I don't think we should underestimate the fact that we could get into trouble again surprisingly fast. I think saying the numbers in hospital are low now, that does not mean the numbers will be low in hospital in five, six, seven, eight weeks' time. They could actually be really quite serious. We've still got 2,000 people in hospital and that number is increasing. If we double from 2,000 to 4,000 from 4,000 to 8,000, 8,000 and so on it doesn't take many doubling times until you're in very, very large numbers indeed.”

Bbc

England’s Chief Medical Officer

15 Jul 2021 2 4

Young-rae Sohn

Inserted 2 years ago

“We judged that there was no need to worry too much about the Delta variant as its infection rate was very low at the time. Looking back at the situation in June, we should have been more active in trying to control the variant.”

Senior official from the Ministry of Health and Welfare of South Korea

14 Jul 2021 4 3

António Guterres

Inserted 2 years ago

“Vaccines offer a ray of hope - but most of the world is still in the shadows. The virus is outpacing vaccine distribution. This pandemic is clearly far from over; more than half its victims died this year. Many millions more are at risk if the virus is allowed to spread like wildfire. The more it spreads, the more variants we see - variants that are more transmissible, more deadly and more likely to undermine the effectiveness of current vaccines.”

Un

Secretary-general of the United Nations

07 Jul 2021 5 4

Mike Ryan

Inserted 2 years ago

“All of the countries of the Americas, we still have nearly one million cases a week. And the same in Europe…with half a million cases a week. It's not like this thing has gone away. It isn't over. Remember last summer when we thought everything was good, we got relaxed and we arrived in September, October and ended up in huge trouble. I think that is where we are going again, but with a much more transmissible variant this time around.”

Head of WHO’s emergencies programme

05 Jul 2021 2 2

James Naismith

Inserted 2 years ago

“Delta is going to sweep through the EU in much the same way as here. Fortunately, they too are vaccinating at a very fast rate, and like the UK are probably just past the point of maximum danger, though summer will be rough. But with so few people in developing countries vaccinated, their point of maximum danger is ahead. Once Delta gets going, it will overwhelm healthcare systems very rapidly unless vaccination improves. More thought needs to be given to whether vaccinating young children in the rich world is as important and ethically justified as vaccinating key workers and the most vulnerable in developing countries.”

Director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute, Oxford

04 Jul 2021 6 4

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

Inserted 2 years ago

“The Delta variant is dangerous and is continuing to evolve and mutate, which requires constant evaluation and careful adjustment of the public health response. Delta has been detected in at least 98 countries, and is spreading quickly in countries with low and high vaccination coverage. The world must equitably share protective gear, oxygen, tests, treatments and vaccines. By July next year, 70 percent of people in every country should be vaccinated. This is the best way to slow the pandemic, save lives and drive a truly global economic recovery, and along the way prevent further dangerous variants from getting the upper hand.”

Director-General of the World Health Organization

04 Jul 2021 2 4

Dame Sarah Gilbert

Inserted 2 years ago

“We have to balance what we think about vaccinating children in high-income countries with vaccinating the rest of the world, because we need to stop transmission of this virus globally. We're not completely out of the woods and that's why I'm very worried about getting vaccines around the rest of the world, because we need to stop the virus being transmitted and continuing to evolve. That could give us a new variant that is going to be really difficult to deal with.”

Oxford professor who led the team behind the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine

04 Jul 2021 4 6

Kim Woo-joo

Inserted 2 years ago

“People will gather from all over the country in the summer vacation season and there could be a balloon effect that spreads from the metropolitan area to non-metropolitan areas. If we can't control the upturn now, we will see a bigger epidemic in August and September.”

Professor of infectious diseases at Korea University Guro Hospital

02 Jul 2021 2 2

Eom Joong-sik

Inserted 2 years ago

“I believe it would be far more reasonable to discuss easing the social distancing rules after the country's vaccination rate exceeds 50 percent of the total population. The government's messages and signals about easing the distancing scheme affected the public's overall attitude and it also fueled the increasing trend of cases.”

Professor of infectious medicine at Gachon University Gil Hospital

02 Jul 2021 2 3

Hans Kluge

Inserted 2 years ago

“This is taking place in the context of a rapidly evolving situation. A new variant of concern - the Delta variant - and in a region where, despite tremendous efforts by member states, millions remain unvaccinated. There will be a new wave in the WHO European region unless we remain disciplined. [Half of elderly people and 40% of healthcare workers still unprotected] That is unacceptable, and that is far from the recommended 80 percent coverage of the adult population. The three conditions for a new wave of excess hospitalisations and deaths before the autumn are therefore in place: New variants, deficit in vaccine uptake, increased social mixing.”

WHO’s regional director for Europe

01 Jul 2021 6 2

Abdool Karim

Inserted 2 years ago

“We're going to see more effective variants of the Delta and then we're going to move on to the next one. It's basically humans versus the virus and its variants. Right now, the virus is gaining the upper hand. It is able to keep one step ahead of us.”

World-leading epidemiologist and former co-chair of South Africa’s Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID-19

29 Jun 2021 4 3

Pavel Luzin

Inserted 2 years ago

“They are not against vaccination, they're against bureaucratic campaigns. And they protest against these campaigns not openly, but by sabotaging them.”

Russia-based expert with the Jamestown Foundation, a think tank in Washington, DC

29 Jun 2021 2 2

Cyril Ramaphosa

Inserted 2 years ago

“Our health facilities are stretched to the limit … ICU beds are in short supply. We are in the grip of a devastating wave that by all indications seems like it will be worse than those that preceded it.”

President of South Africa

27 Jun 2021 2 2

Tsai Ing-wen

Inserted 2 years ago

“Thank you to the US for this moving gesture of friendship. These vaccines will go a long way toward keeping Taiwan safe & healthy.”

President of Taiwan

19 Jun 2021 4 3

Sergei Sobyanin

Inserted 2 years ago

“A new mutation has arrived, a new strain is active. It's more aggressive, it's harder to recover from, it spreads faster. It's much more likely to penetrate a person's immune system. This dynamic is fairly unexpected given that more than 60% of Muscovites have either already been ill or been vaccinated - it is a large segment of the population... We of course did not expect an increase (in cases), but a decrease. We are very close to stricter decisions - temporary but stricter - in terms of restrictions.”

Mayor of Moscow

17 Jun 2021 3 2

Bernard Smith

Inserted 2 years ago

“Between 60 to 70 percent of people here say they are not willing to take a vaccine and that seems to stem from a general distrust of what the government is trying to get them to do. And this is despite the fact that the Russian Sputnik vaccine is internationally recognised and has been very effective.”

Al Jazeera’s journalist reporting from Moscow

12 Jun 2021 4 2

Sergei Sobyanin

Inserted 2 years ago

“During the past week the situation with the spread of the coronavirus infection has sharply deteriorated. We cannot not react to such a situation. To stop the growth of infections and to save people's lives, today I signed a decree providing for non-working days between June 15-19.”

Mayor of Moscow

12 Jun 2021 2 2

Mike Ryan

Inserted 2 years ago

“Right now the pathogens have the upper hand, they are emerging more frequently and often silently in a planet that is out of balance. We need to turn that very thing that has exposed us in this pandemic, our interconnectedness, we need to turn that into a strength.”

Head of WHO’s emergencies programme

31 May 2021 2 1

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

Inserted 2 years ago

“The one recommendation I believe will do the most to strengthen WHO [World Health Organization] and global health security is the recommendation of a treaty on pandemic preparedness and response which could also strengthen relations between member states and foster cooperation. This is an idea whose time has come. A [pandemic] treaty would foster improved sharing, trust and accountability, and provide the solid foundation on which to build other mechanisms for global health security.”

Director-General of the World Health Organization

31 May 2021 3 1

Dale Fisher

Inserted 2 years ago

“We believe that all the laboratory workers have had serology [tests] done and all those antibody tests were negative and that was part of the reason why the risk was downplayed. We believe that all the laboratory workers have had serology [tests] done and all those antibody tests were negative and that was part of the reason why the risk was downplayed... Any country that found any Covid-19 in its borders before the outbreak started would suddenly clam up. This is why I would argue that diplomacy is the way forward with this, creating a no-blame culture. The only way you really can get to the bottom of this is just to say: 'Look, there's no penalties, we just need to sort this out.'.”

Chair of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network

30 May 2021 2 1

Maria Van Kerkhove

Inserted 2 years ago

“At the present time, we have not yet made an assessment of the virus variant reported in Vietnam. Our country office is working with the Ministry of Health in Vietnam and we expect more information soon. However we will provide more information as soon as we receive it.”

World Health Organization (WHO) epidemiologist

29 May 2021 3 2

Nguyen Thanh Long

Inserted 2 years ago

“Vietnam has uncovered a new COVID-19 variant combining characteristics of the two existing variants first found in India and the UK. That the new one is an Indian variant with mutations that originally belong to the UK variant is very dangerous.”

Minister of Health of Vietnam

29 May 2021 3 3

Theresa Tam

Inserted 2 years ago

“Our efforts have got us well and truly over the peak of the third wave nationally and heading for a much better summer, if we can stay the course. While this forecast is very encouraging, it reaffirms that now is not the time to relax our measures. If measures are relaxed, increasing the number of community-wide in-persons contacts, resurgence is likely.”

Cbc

Canada's Chief Public Health Officer

28 May 2021 2 2

Jen Psaki

Inserted 2 years ago

“We don't have enough information to draw a conclusion about the origins [of the coronavirus]. We need data. We need an independent investigation. And that's exactly what we've been calling for.”

White House spokeswoman

24 May 2021 2 2

John Nkengasong

Inserted 2 years ago

“This is very problematic [India stopping vaccine exports] as it means unpredictability of our vaccination programmes and a serious risk of not achieving our stated target... on time. Given India's huge challenges, it will be impossible to expect anything soon.”

Director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

18 May 2021 4 4

Alexander Simidchiev

Inserted 2 years ago

“At the time it was not necessarily a bad decision [bet heavily on the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine]. However, relying predominantly on one vaccine without ordering sufficient amounts of the other ones proved to be the wrong approach in the long term.”

Politico

Pulmonologist and a former member of parliament from the opposition Democratic Bulgaria coalition

18 May 2021 3 3

Navneet Sehgal

Inserted 3 years ago

“We keep recovering 10 to 20 bodies every now and then [on the banks of the river Ganges]. We have put a police force on the river and have also sent communications to local authorities that this practice [dumping of corpses in the river] be stopped.”

Spokesman for the Indian northern state of Uttar Pradesh

15 May 2021 3 2

Maria Van Kerkhove

Inserted 3 years ago

“We are classifying this as a variant of concern at a global level. There is some available information to suggest increased transmissibility.”

World Health Organization (WHO) epidemiologist

11 May 2021 3 3

Eliseu Alves Waldman

Inserted 3 years ago

“A crucial pillar in public health security is governance. But in Brazil, we've lost governance. This is vital not just internally but also externally in order to guarantee sufficient medical imports.”

Epidemiologist and professor at the public University of Sao Paulo (USP)

10 May 2021 2 2

Anthony Fauci

Inserted 3 years ago

“You've got to shut down. I believe several of the Indian states have already done that, but you need to break the chain of transmission. And one of the ways to do that is to shut down.”

Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

09 May 2021 2 2

Emmanuel Macron

Inserted 3 years ago

“The Anglo-Saxons must first stop their export bans. I am calling very clearly on the U.S. to end their export ban of vaccines and components that prevent production. CureVac says it can't produce in Europe because components are blocked in the U.S. … So lift the export ban - lift it, on the ingredients and the vaccines. And, secondly, liberate the doses. If we want to work quickly, today there isn't one factory in the world that can't produce doses for poor countries because of intellectual property. The priority today is not intellectual property - it's not true. We would be lying to ourselves. It's production.”

Politico

President of France

08 May 2021 8 2

Charles Michel

Inserted 3 years ago

“On the intellectual property, we don't think in the short term that it's the magic bullet but we are ready to engage on this topic as soon as a concrete proposal will be put on the table.”

Politico

President of the European Council

08 May 2021 3 2

Antony Blinken

Inserted 3 years ago

“Unless the organization's leadership takes appropriate action, the assembly will once again exclude the vital participation of Taiwan. There is no reasonable justification for Taiwan's continued exclusion from this forum, and the United States calls upon the WHO [World Health Organization] director-general to invite Taiwan to participate as an observer at the WHA [World Health Assembly] - as it has in previous years, prior to objections registered by the government of the People's Republic of China. WHO leadership and all responsible nations should recognize that excluding the interests of 24 million people at the WHA serves only to imperil, not advance, our shared global health objectives. Taiwan is a reliable partner, a vibrant democracy and a force for good in the world, and its exclusion from the WHA would be detrimental to our collective international efforts to get the pandemic under control and prevent future health crises. We urge Taiwan's immediate invitation to the World Health Assembly.”

U.S. Secretary of State

07 May 2021 7 5

Rahul Gandhi

Inserted 3 years ago

“India is home to one out of every six human beings on the planet. The pandemic has demonstrated that our size, genetic diversity and complexity make India fertile ground for the virus to rapidly mutate, transforming itself into a more contagious and more dangerous form. Allowing the uncontrollable spread of the virus in our country will be devastating not only for our people but also for the rest of the world.”

India’s main opposition leader - member of the Indian National Congress

07 May 2021 2 2

Alejandro Cravioto

Inserted 3 years ago

“[We] came to the conclusion that there is enough evidence of safety and the capacity of the vaccine to prevent severe disease or symptomatic and hospitalized cases up to 79 per cent. The information we have for people over 60 is still very scarce. There is no reason to think that the vaccine would behave differently in this older age group.”

Cbc

Heads the WHO advisory group on immunizations

07 May 2021 3 3

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

Inserted 3 years ago

“This afternoon, WHO gave emergency use listing to sign off on Beijing's COVID-19 vaccine, making it the sixth vaccine to receive WHO validation for safety, efficacy and quality. This expands the list of vaccines that COVAX can buy and gives countries confidence to expedite their own regulatory approval and to import and administer a vaccine.”

Cbc

Director-General of the World Health Organization

07 May 2021 4 2

Ramyata Limbu

Inserted 3 years ago

“The health ministry did repeatedly warn the government about what would happen … but I guess it's like the similar case in India where there was lull … in early January, February, when the cases were quite low. So we felt we were probably protected.”

Al Jazeera’s journalist reporting from Kathmandu - Nepal

07 May 2021 2 2

Jyotindra Sharma

Inserted 3 years ago

“Right now there are no beds available today in any hospital that is treating COVID patients. Even if any beds were made available, there is a huge scarcity of oxygen and we are not at the peak of this crisis. In the extreme situation, people could be dying in the streets. It is just not possible to immediately increase the capacity of the hospitals.”

Chief of the Hospital for Advanced Medicine & Surgery in Kathmandu

07 May 2021 2 1

Joe Biden

Inserted 3 years ago

“Now that we have the vaccine supply, we're focused on convincing even more Americans to show up and get the vaccine that is available to them. If we succeed in this effort ... then Americans will have taken a serious step towards a return to normal. There are a lot of younger people, especially those in their 20s and 30s who believe they don't need it. Well, I want to be absolutely clear: You do need to get vaccinated.”

President of the United States

04 May 2021 3 2

Bhramar Mukherjee

Inserted 3 years ago

“In my opinion, only a national stay at home order and declaring medical emergency will help to address the current healthcare needs. The number of active cases is accumulating, not just the daily new cases. Even the reported numbers state there are around 3.5 million active cases.”

Epidemiologist and researcher with the University of Michigan

02 May 2021 2 2

Krishnaswamy VijayRaghavan

Inserted 3 years ago

“The ferocity of the second wave took everyone by surprise. While we were all aware of second waves in other countries, we had vaccines at hand, and no indications from modelling exercises suggested the scale of the surge.”

Principal scientific adviser to the Indian government

29 Apr 2021 3 2

Devi Sridhar

Inserted 3 years ago

“If we really want the pandemic to be over, we not only have to vaccinate at home, but vaccinate everywhere. This is the only way to prevent the emergence of variants that could escape our immunity, or affect children more severely. Here, science is racing ahead to provide solutions. Researchers are already working on a pan-coronavirus vaccine that would both vaccinate against the virus that causes Covid-19 and prevent future spillover events.”

Professor of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

27 Apr 2021 4 3

AstraZeneca

Inserted 3 years ago

“AstraZeneca has fully complied with the Advance Purchase Agreement with the European Commission. We are making progress addressing the technical challenges and our output is improving, but the production cycle of a vaccine is very long which means these improvements take time to result in increased finished vaccine doses.”

Statement by pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca

26 Apr 2021 6 2

Stefan De Keersmaecker

Inserted 3 years ago

“Some terms of the contract have not been respected... the company has not been in a position to come up with a reliable strategy to ensure a timely delivery of doses. We want to make sure there is a speedy delivery of a sufficient number of doses that European citizens are entitled to and which have been promised on the basis of the contract.”

Spokesperson for the European Union Commission for health, food safety and transport

26 Apr 2021 6 4

Licypriya Kangujam

Inserted 3 years ago

“I really appreciate the kind gesture of the Pakistani people for standing with the people of India during this difficult time for the country. We may be divided by the border but we breathe the same air.”

Indian climate and environmental activist

25 Apr 2021 1 2

Imran Khan

Inserted 3 years ago

“I want to express our solidarity with the people of India as they battle a dangerous wave of COVID-19. Our prayers for a speedy recovery go to all those suffering from the pandemic in our neighbourhood & the world. We must fight this global challenge confronting humanity together.”

Twitter

Prime Minister of Pakistan

24 Apr 2021 3 2

Vikram Patel

Inserted 3 years ago

“While complacency in adhering to masks and physical distancing might have played a role, it seems increasingly likely that this second wave has been fuelled by a much more virulent strain.”

Professor of global health at Harvard Medical School

24 Apr 2021 2 1

Elizabeth Puranam

Inserted 3 years ago

“The scale of the crisis in India perhaps has not been seen anywhere else since the start of the pandemic. India has asked its external affairs ministry, with all of the embassies overseas, to source and import 50,000 metric tonnes of oxygen to save people's lives. Its defence ministry is also airlifting 23 mobile oxygen generation plants from Germany. The US Chamber of Commerce has asked the Biden administration to free millions of doses of the Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine, which is in storage in the US and ship them to India as well as countries like Brazil hit hard by the pandemic.”

Al Jazeera’s journalist reporting from India

24 Apr 2021 4 1

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

Inserted 3 years ago

“Nearly 900 million vaccine doses have been administered globally, but over 81% have gone to high- or upper middle-income countries, while low-income countries have received just 0.3%.”

Director-General of the World Health Organization

23 Apr 2021 3 3

Jodie Guest

Inserted 3 years ago

“What you're seeing there is exactly what we hoped and wanted to see: As really high rates of vaccinations happen, hospitalizations and death rates come down. My concern is whether the vaccine uptake will be as strong in these younger age groups. If it's not, we will not see the positive impact for vaccines in these younger age groups that we've seen in our older population.”

Apnews

Public health researcher at Emory University

22 Apr 2021 3 3

Narendra Modi

Inserted 3 years ago

“The situation was manageable until a few weeks ago. The second wave of infections has come like a storm. The central and state governments, as well as the private sector, are together trying to ensure oxygen supplies to those in need. We are trying to increase oxygen production and supply across the country.”

Prime Minister of India

20 Apr 2021 2 1

Greta Thunberg

Inserted 3 years ago

“It is completely unethical that high-income countries are now vaccinating young and healthy people if that happens at the expense of people in risk groups and on the front lines in low- and middle-income countries. The international community, governments and vaccine developers must step up their game and address the tragedy that is vaccine inequity. Just with the climate crisis, those who are the most vulnerable need to be prioritised and global problems require global solutions.”

Climate Activist

19 Apr 2021 2 4

David Malpass

Inserted 3 years ago

“Many countries now have dollars available to spend on doses, but rapid deliveries aren't available. I would like to underline here the importance for countries that have the prospect of excess vaccine supplies to release them as soon as possible.”