Coronavirus: Rich nations, drug makers promise to close yawning vaccine gaps
- Just one per cent of some 1.53 billion doses have so far gone to Africa, WHO tells G20 summit on the pandemic
- Pfizer and BioNTech pledged to make available 1 billion cut-price vaccines this year to poorer countries
Lavishly-funded mass inoculation campaigns are helping many wealthy countries slash infections, but few shots have reached less developed nations where the virus still rages sometimes uncontrollably, drawing accusations of “vaccine apartheid”.
To date, some 1.53 billion doses have been administered globally, but only around 1 per cent of them in Africa, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
“We should hang our heads in shame,” said South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, one of numerous world leaders to address a special Group of 20 summit on the pandemic, hosted by Italy and the European Union’s executive Commission.
“We are in a global war against a pandemic. When you are in a war and you are all allies, you must use all your weapons without hiding behind profit at the expense of lives,” he added.
In their concluding Rome Declaration, the leaders called for voluntary licensing and technology transfers to boost vaccine production. But there was no consensus on a contested push by the United States and other nations for pharmaceutical companies to waive valuable patents.