The World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has urged companies making the next-generation mRNA vaccines to share their technology.

“New manufacturing hubs — including for mRNA vaccines — are being developed, but this could be accelerated by companies openly sharing technology and know-how. In particular, I urge BioNTech, Pfizer and Moderna to share their knowhow so that we can speed up the development of new production,” Dr Tedros said.

“The sooner we start building more vaccine hubs and upping global vaccine capacity, the sooner we can diminish deadly surges,” he said, pointing out that despite the vaccine-sharing by some countries, it was “still only a trickle, which is being outpaced by variants.”

The Delta variant, he said, had been detected in 98 countries and was spreading rapidly in countries with low and high vaccination coverage.