 A look now at the international response to the COVID-19 vaccination. The Director-General of the World Health Organization, WHO, Dr. Tedros, has confirmed that a new variant of the novel coronavirus has been detected in Japan. The variant in Japan is reportedly different to the ones found in the UK and Africa. Dr. Tedros says the emergence of variants is not unusual. He explained that the more the virus spreads, the higher the chance of new changes to the virus. At present, the variants do not seem to show increased severity of disease. With new treatments coming down the pipeline, we're hopeful that more lives of those with serious cases of COVID-19 can be saved. But we need to follow the public health basics now more than ever. Keep as much physical distance as you can from other people. Keep rooms well ventilated, wear a mask, keep your hands clean, and cough away from others into your elbow. You might get fed up of hearing it, but the virus is not fed up with us. Using transmission limits the chance of dangerous new variants from developing. Dr. Tedros says efforts have intensified towards ensuring equitable distribution of approved vaccines to all countries, particularly those at lower income levels. Next week, at the WHO Executive Board, I will be encouraging all countries to fulfill their pledges to COVAX. I call for a collective commitment so that within the next 100 days, vaccination for health workers and those at high risk in all countries are underway. Governments, manufacturers, civil society, religious and community leaders must come together to create the greatest mass mobilization in history for equitable vaccination. Over 40 countries have access and introduced to their population five different COVID-19 vaccines, however they are all high income countries. As such, the WHO is accelerating the facilitation of lower income countries through the COVAX facility. The aim is to have these countries access vaccines by February. But Dr. Bruce Alliward, Senior Advisor to the Director General, says the WHO needs a cross-sectoral partnership to achieve this. We require the cooperation of vaccine manufacturers to prioritize deliveries to the COVAX facility. We require the cooperation of our financiers to see through the financing necessary. And we require the cooperation, as Dr. Tedros said, of those key suppliers to make sure that we have the necessary data to ensure these vaccines meet all the criteria necessary in terms of efficacy, safety and quality. Now we are also looking, are there some extraordinary things we could do to even bring that timeline a little bit further ahead? And we have a great ambition actually to try and do something even in January. But again, they're required the cooperation of a lot of other players, particularly the suppliers to prioritize the COVAX facility, and not the COVAX facility but really the AMC countries to be receiving vaccines, because right now we have an inequitable situation where vaccines are going to high-income countries, upper-middle-income countries and not yet to the lowest-income countries. This is not something that the COVAX facility fully controls. We're doing everything possible to advance that. The WHO noted that countries are at different levels of preparedness and readiness for the introduction of the vaccines. The Director of Immunization, Vaccines and Biological at the WHO, Dr. Kate O'Brien, says the WHO is guiding countries on the mechanisms needed, including the regulatory process. Not only will products need to have this review by WHO, but countries also need to have a way to authorize the importation of the products. We're working with countries on training of healthcare workers so that the dosing requirements, the engagement with patients is appropriate for the vaccines that we have. Countries do also need to choose who the priority groups will be with these limited number of doses that will come initially. There does have to be a decision in the country about what that prioritization will be, and we are of course very strongly recommending that it is health workers who are at high and very high risk of COVID disease, and older age groups who are also at high and very high risk of serious disease or even of death. Globally, more than 90 million cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in 223 countries with 1.9 million deaths reported.