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However, nearly 130 countries with a total population of about 2.5 billion have yet to administer a single dose of the coronavirus vaccine.
THE NUMBER OF coronavirus vaccinations administered globally has overtaken the number of reported infections, the World Health Organization said on Friday.
But the group warned that wealthy nations are leading vaccination efforts by far.
"In one sense, that's good news and a remarkable achievement in such a short time frame," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference. "But more than three-quarters of those vaccinations are in just 10 countries that account for almost 60% of global GDP."
Nearly 130 countries – with a total population of about 2.5 billion – have yet to administer a single dose of the coronavirus vaccine, Tedros said. He encouraged countries to share their vaccines.
"Once countries with vaccines have vaccinated their own health workers and older people, the best way to protect the rest of their own population is to share vaccines so other countries can do the same," Tedros said. "That's because the longer it takes to vaccinate those most at risk everywhere, the more opportunity we give the virus to mutate and evade vaccines."
"In other words, unless we suppress the virus everywhere, we could end up back at square one," he added.
Earlier this week, the organization reported that global cases were down for the third week in a row. Infections are down in the U.S., Brazil, the U.K., Russia, India, Italy and France, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Officials report over 105 million cases of the virus documented across the globe and roughly 2.3 million deaths.
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While cases are down, researchers are still concerned about new variants, including one first found in South Africa that has seen vaccine efficacy rates drop.
Mike Ryan, the executive director of WHO's health emergencies program, said that countries need to keep up their mitigation efforts, alluding to a statement that was a common assurance from former President Donald Trump about the pandemic that turned out not to be true.
"It's been a tough number of weeks for people in many countries, and it's beginning to pay off," Ryan said. "Adding vaccine into that equation is going to double and triple the payoff and the lives that we can save. But we have to follow through and we have to continue to do everything to keep pushing that number down. Remember what happened the last time someone said, 'We're turning the corner.'"