 And now to South Africa, where the President Sierra Ramaphosa has called on the United Nations community to support a proposal to allow more countries to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines in an effort to increase vaccination across the globe. Now, South Africa has been an epicenter of the coronavirus variant, most recently detecting the C12 variant that has now spread to most provinces and to seven other countries in Africa, Europe, Asia, and Oceania. It was also the first country to detect the beta variant, one of only four labelled of concern by the World Health Organization. Now, over 86,500 people have died of COVID-19 in South Africa, according to John Sopskin's trucking. It is an indictment on humanity that more than 82% of the world's vaccine doses have been acquired by wealthy countries, while less than 1% has gone to low-income countries. Unless we address this as a matter of urgency, the pandemic will last much longer, and new mutations of the virus will emerge and spread. South Africa reaffirms its call for fair and equitable distribution of vaccines. We urge all member states to support the proposal for a temporary waiver of certain provisions of the agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights to allow more countries, particularly low- and middle-income countries, to produce COVID-19 vaccines. Notified about fresh news updates