Fore said the $665 million needed included $400 million for polio and $255 million for measles. Measles — one of the world most contagious known diseases — has staged a global resurgence in recent years, with ongoing outbreaks in all parts of the world. Vaccination coverage gaps have been further exacerbated in 2020 by COVID-19, and the WHO said data on measles death rates for 2019, due to be released next week, “will show the continued negative toll that sustained outbreaks are having.” With polio, case numbers worldwide had been reduced to extremely low levels before the COVID-19 pandemic, but transmission of the crippling virus is now expected to increase in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and in areas of Africa where polio vaccination coverage rates have dipped. “We now have huge numbers of un- or under-immunized children,” the WHO’s director of immunization, vaccines and biologicals Catherine O’Brien told a briefing in Geneva. She said disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic to health services had led to 91 routine vaccination campaigns being stopped in 53 countries. “They’re coming back, but they haven’t come back fully or as quickly as we were hoping they will,” she said, adding that this was creating “immunity gaps” for measles, polio and several other infectious diseases. “If we don’t act quickly soon for both polio, measles, yellow fever, cholera, typhoid, we will see significant outbreaks in 2021 or 2022,” O’Brien said. (Reporting by Kate Kelland in London and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Alex Richardson)