The world health organization (who) said that the international mechanism for universal vaccination COVAX had to be postponed due to the “vaccination nationalism” of the United States and other rich countries, the Financial Times reports.

The United States, as well as the United Kingdom and Japan, did not join the program at the proposed time and preferred bilateral contracts for the supply of the vaccine with international corporations. For this reason, the deadline for their entry into COVAX has shifted by almost three weeks — from August 31 to September 18, and the date when participants will make their first payments has been moved to October 9.

With the help of an international program, who planned to distribute 2 billion doses of the vaccine worldwide by the end of 2021. Poor countries, according to the plan, will get vaccinated thanks to funding from the better-off.

Earlier, the who said that nationalism was a factor that led to an increase in the coronavirus pandemic. First of all, this affected the distribution of resources, and now it can affect the effectiveness of the distribution of the vaccine — “vaccination nationalism” is a great danger.

According to the Johns Hopkins Institute, there are more than 25 million cases of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection worldwide. Due to the COVID-19 pneumonia caused by IT, 863.5 thousand patients died. More than 17.3 million patients were cured.