People in poorer countries will 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 their citizens need, a new study has found, as G7 leaders have indicated the desire to split their overdose before a meeting on Friday.
“This huge excess of vaccine is the embodiment of vaccine nationalism, with countries prioritizing their own vaccination needs over other countries and global recovery,” said ONE, a pro-poverty group.
The ONE political team added that a “massive course correction” in distribution was needed if the world wanted to protect and save lives as the death toll from the pandemic approaches 2.5 million.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that only 10 countries had so far administered 75 percent of all vaccinations, describing it as “extremely uneven and unfair”.
Guterres said at least 130 countries have not yet received a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine.
“At this critical time, vaccine equity is the biggest moral test in front of the global community,” he said, adding that a Friday meeting of the G7’s top industrialized nations “could create the impetus” to address inequality.
“Unprecedented inequality”
There are indications that the G7 is listening to the leaders of France, the United Kingdom and the United States, all 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% of the vaccine supply to developing countries.
“It is an unprecedented acceleration of global inequality and it is also politically unsustainable as it paves the way for a war of influence over vaccines,” Macron told the Financial Times in a video link interview Thursday.
Macron said German Chancellor Angela Merkel also agreed that the decision to split some of Europe’s vaccine stock should be a concerted effort.
According to one analysis, overdoses of COVID-19 germinated only by rich countries would be enough to vaccinate the entire adult population in Africa. [Juan Mabromata/AFP]
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he is ready to deliver hundreds of millions of reserve vaccine doses to developing countries once all UK adults have been inoculated.
The report in the British newspaper Times said that up to 80 percent of the excess dose will go to the global vaccine alliance, COVAX, which was set up to distribute COVID-19 drugs to lower-income countries.
The trial is expected to begin no earlier than March 1.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden is expected to commit $ 4 billion to the COVAX program.
According to the World Health Organization, the facility needs only $ 5 billion this year alone to be able to distribute vaccines to the most vulnerable 20% of the population in poor countries.
The Biden administration did not disclose whether it would be willing to share its COVID-19 vaccine stock. Currently, the US has sprouted 600 million doses from drug manufacturers, enough to cover its entire population under two-shot vaccine schemes.
The timeline of European and American commitments remains unclear, leaving many people around the world unable to receive the vaccine this year.
But, as the ONE study said, rich nations “will not do any favors to their own citizens” if they continue to accumulate vaccines.
“If the virus can thrive anywhere in the world, the risk of new variants increases and it is only a matter of time before strains that undermine vaccines and tools that have been developed to combat COVID-19 appear,” the report said. .
Such concerns have prompted Mexico over the issue of distribution to the UN Security Council earlier this week.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said his government would like the UN to address vaccine grabbing and equity so that “all countries have the opportunity to vaccinate their people.”
Russia and China have already begun transporting tens of thousands of doses of COVID-19 vaccines to other developing and underdeveloped countries.
According to the COVID-19 tracker of Johns Hopkins University, over 110 million people worldwide have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and over 62 million have recovered.