‘We need more’: UN joins criticism of G7 vaccine commitment

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G7 promises 1 billion doses of vaccineActivists say G7 is too slow and lacks ambitionBritain to donate 100 million dosesUK says some countries are using vaccines to exert influence

CARBIS BAY, England, June 10 (Reuters) – A Group of Seven plan to donate one billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine to the poorest countries lacks ambition, is far too slow and shows that Western leaders are not yet in a position to tackle the worst public health crisis in a century, activists said on Friday.

While the UN chief hailed the move, he even said more was needed. Antonio Guterres has warned that if people in developing countries are not inoculated quickly, the virus could still mutate and become resistant to new vaccines.

“We need more than that,” he said of the G7 plan. “We need a global vaccination plan. We need to act with logic, with a sense of urgency and with the priorities of a war economy, and we are still a long way from getting there.”

US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson used the G7 summit in England to announce the donation of 500 million and 100 million vaccines respectively to the poorest nations in the world.

Canada is expected to pledge to share up to 100 million doses and more pledges could follow after Johnson urged G7 leaders to help inoculate nearly 8 billion people worldwide against coronavirus by the end of next year. Read more

But health and poverty campaigners said that while the donations were a step in the right direction, Western leaders failed to realize that exceptional efforts were needed to defeat the virus. Distribution assistance was also needed, they said.

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who pushed for wealthier countries to share more of the cost of vaccinating developing countries, said the G7 pledges were more akin to “doing the begging tower” than to a real solution.

“It’s a catastrophic failure if we can’t go in the next week or two… with a plan that actually rids the world of COVID now that we have a vaccine,” he told Reuters. Read more

Alex Harris of Wellcome, a London-based science and health charity, challenged the G7 to show the political leadership the crisis demanded.

“What the world needs are vaccines now, not later this year,” he said. “We urge G7 leaders to raise their ambition.”

‘FAILURE’

COVID-19 has torn the global economy apart, with infections reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.

The race to end a pandemic that has killed an estimated 3.9 million people and wreaked social and economic destruction will feature prominently at the three-day summit which kicked off in the English resort town of Carbis Bay on Friday.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has warned that other countries are using vaccines as diplomatic tools to secure influence. read more Britain and the United States said their donations would come with no strings attached.

So far, vaccination efforts are strongly correlated with wealth: the United States, Europe, Israel and Bahrain are far ahead of other countries. A total of 2.2 billion people have been vaccinated according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

As most people need two doses of the vaccine, and possibly boosters to fight emerging variants, the charity Oxfam said the world would need 11 billion doses to end the pandemic.

“If the best the G7 leaders can do is give 1 billion doses of vaccine, then this summit will have been a failure,” said Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s health policy manager.

Oxfam has also called on G7 leaders to back a waiver on the intellectual property behind vaccines.

French President Emmanuel Macron has said intellectual property rights should not hinder access to vaccines during a pandemic, appearing to back Biden on the matter. Read more

POSSESSION OF THE VACCINE?

But the pharmaceutical industry has opposed it, saying it would stifle innovation and do little to increase supplies. Britain, which backed non-profit shooter Oxford-AstraZeneca (AZN.L), said a patent waiver was not necessary.

Of the 100 million UK vaccines, 80 million will go to the COVAX program led by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the rest will be shared bilaterally with countries in need.

Johnson echoed Biden in calling on fellow leaders to make similar pledges and on pharmaceutical companies to embrace the not-for-profit model during the pandemic. The US vaccine donation Pfizer (PFE.N) will be provided at cost.

The UK doses will be drawn from stock it has already purchased for its domestic program, and will come from suppliers Oxford-AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Johnson & Johnson’s (JNJ.N) Janssen, Moderna and others.

Reporting by Kate Holton; edited by Guy Faulconbridge and Grant McCool

Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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