The world risks becoming complacent about the threat from COVID-19 despite the danger from new variants, the head of Gavi, the global vaccines alliance.

Seth Berkley told CGTN that emerging situations were dominating political discourse even though the pandemic is not over.

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"Many people are getting complacent about this pandemic. And, of course, the challenge is the pandemic is not over. We're still seeing the virus mutate," Berkley said, adding: "The challenge for us is to keep this on the agenda."

Gavi has supplied 1.5 billion coronavirus vaccine doses to 145 countries, 90 percent of them to lower and lower-middle income countries. However Berkley warned that despite progress, vaccination rates were too low in vulnerable groups in many areas and that 18 countries still have vaccination rates below 10 percent.

He said that the biggest lesson from the early days of the pandemic was to ensure politics did not override science in tackling outbreaks and particularly to ensure that countries co-operated in fighting the threat.

"I think the unfortunate thing is it was very heavily politicized at the beginning. And, you know, in a pandemic, you need to follow the science. If it becomes political, it becomes very hard and it puts people's lives unnecessarily at risk," he said in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos.