A new study has found that G7 leaders indicate that people in the poorest nations will probably not be able to get a COVID-19 vaccine this year because the richest countries in the world have bought a billion more doses than they need. its citizens. before a meeting on Friday.
“This huge vaccine excess is the embodiment of vaccine nationalism, as countries prioritize their own vaccination needs at the expense of other countries and global recovery,” said ONE, a group campaigning against poverty.
The ONE political team added that a “massive correction of the course” was needed in the distribution if the world wanted to protect and save lives as the death toll from the pandemic approached 2.5 million.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that only ten countries had so far administered 75 per cent of all vaccinations, calling it “unequal and unfair”.
Guterres said at least 130 countries have not yet received a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine.
“At this critical juncture, vaccine equity is the biggest moral test facing the global community,” he said, adding that a meeting later Friday of the G7’s major industrialized nations “can create momentum.” to deal with inequality.
“Unprecedented inequality”
There are indications that the G7 is listening to the leaders of France, the United Kingdom and the United States, suggesting that they will make concessions on vaccines during the virtual meeting, which is hosted by the United Kingdom.
French President Emmanuel Macron has called on Europe and the United States to commit between 3 and 5 percent of the supply of vaccines to developing countries.
“It’s an unprecedented acceleration of global inequality and it’s also politically unsustainable because it’s paving the way for a war of influence over vaccines,” Macron told the Financial Times in an interview with a video link.
Macron said German Chancellor Angela Merkel also agreed that the decision to share part of Europe’s vaccine reserve should be a concerted effort.
According to one analysis, the overdose of COVID-19 cornered by rich countries would only be enough to vaccinate the entire adult population of Africa. [Juan Mabromata/AFP]
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was also willing to give away hundreds of millions of doses of spare vaccine to the developing world, once all adults in the UK have been inoculated.
The UK Times report said up to 80 per cent of the excess doses will go to the global vaccine alliance, COVAX, which was set up to distribute COVID-19 drugs to lower-income countries.
The process is expected to begin no earlier than March 1.
Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to pledge $ 4 billion to the COVAX program.
According to the World Health Organization, the facility needs only $ 5 billion this year to be able to distribute vaccines to at least 20% of the most vulnerable population in poor countries.
The Biden administration has not revealed whether it would be willing to share its COVID-19 vaccine reserve. Currently, the U.S. has wiped out 600 million doses of drug manufacturers, enough to cover its entire population under two-shot vaccine regimes.
The timing of European and US commitments is still unclear, leaving the possibility that many people around the world may not yet be vaccinated this year.
But, as the ONE study said, rich nations “will do no favors to their own citizens” if they continue to accumulate vaccines.
“If the virus can thrive anywhere in the world, it increases the risk of new variants and it is only a matter of time before the strains that undermine vaccines and the tools that have been developed to combat COVID-19 emerge,” he says. ‘report. .
These concerns prompted Mexico to issue the distribution to the UN Security Council earlier this week.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said his government would want the United Nations to address vaccine accumulation and equity so that “all countries have the opportunity to vaccinate their people.”
Russia and China have already begun shipping tens of thousands of doses of their COVID-19 vaccines to other developing and underdeveloped countries.
According to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 tracker, more than 110 million people worldwide have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and more than 62 million have recovered.