WHO: COVID health emergency could end this year

• "We have a chance to end the public health emergency this year if we do the things that we've been talking about," Ryan said.
• "What we need to do is get to low levels of disease incidence with maximum vaccination of our populations, so nobody has to die."

Flashback: WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had previously warned that the world was "on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure" because of unequal COVID-19 vaccine distribution.

• Poorer countries have struggled to get and distribute the vaccine, while wealthier countries like the U.S. have a surplus and began encouraging people to receive boosters.
• "I will not stay silent when companies and countries that control the global supply of vaccines think the world’s poor should be satisfied with leftovers," Adhanom Ghebreyesus said late last year.