As Australians line up for their COVID-19 vaccinations, the world’s most vulnerable communities continue to struggle with deadly outbreaks – with little hope of a vaccine in sight. So far, only 1% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, placing people facing extreme poverty in a highly vulnerable position, an Australian based Non-Governmental organisation Caritas Australia in a latest press release.
“As Bangladesh enters its most severe lockdown yet, amid a deadly outbreak sparked by the highly-contagious Delta variant, experts are warning that the new variant poses the greatest threat to countries that are poorly vaccinated, with low-income countries among the worst affected.
Bangladesh’s national testing rate shows a staggering 20 per cent of people testing positive and alarming spikes in the daily death tolls. There are also serious impacts for the world’s largest refugee camp which is in Cox’s Bazar, where nearly one million Rohingya live in informal housing,” Caritas said.
“However, the World Health Organization says just over 10 million vaccine doses have been administered in Bangladesh – most of those are only first doses, in a population of more than 160 million. In Africa, it’s estimated that less than one percent of the population is fully vaccinated – the lowest ratio globally.“
