Poorer countries risk being overlooked during the roll-out of coronavirus vaccines, a top official with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) warned.

“I'm very worried,” Frederik Kristensen, the deputy head of Oslo-based CEPI told AFP.

“If we have pictures going around the world now of how everybody in the wealthy part of the world are getting vaccines and nothing is happening in the (developing) part of the world, that is a big, big, big problem”.

The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which are at the most advanced stage, they use technology that requires storage at minus 70 degrees Celsius for the former and minus 20 degrees Celsius for the latter.

So the question is how to distribute them in poorer hot countries, Kristensen asked. “We've been to places where the last mile of the transportation happens on the back of a motorbike,” he said.