The World Health Organization has said that 80,000 to 180,000 healthcare workers may have been killed by Covid-19 up to May this year, insisting they must be prioritised for vaccination.
A WHO paper estimated that out of the world's 135 million health staff, "between 80,000 to 180,000 health and care workers could have died from Covid-19 in the period between January 2020 to May 2021".
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said healthcare workers needed to be immunised against the disease first, as he slammed the global inequity in the vaccine roll-out. "Data from 119 countries suggest that on average, two in five health and care workers globally are fully vaccinated.