In an article for The Telegraph and other newspapers in the G7 nations, the heads of the World Health Organization [WHO], International Monetary Fund [IMF], World Bank Group and World Trade Organization [WTO] have urged richer countries to divert Covid vaccines to poorer nations to combat the risk of new and emerging variants that could force the world back into lockdown.
The authors of the article warn of a “two-track pandemic” starting to emerge, with “inequitable vaccine distribution leaving untold millions of people vulnerable to the virus” and “allowing deadly variants to emerge and ricochet back across the world”.
The article continues: “Even countries with advanced vaccination programmes have been forced to reimpose stricter public health measures. It need not be this way.”
The article is jointly written by WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus; Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the IMF; David Malpass, president of the World Bank Group, and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the director-general of the WTO. It is set to be released as G7 finance ministers convene in London and G7 health ministers meet in Oxford.
The authors’ ambition is that by the time G7 world leaders meet in Cornwall on June 11, an agreement will have been made to help vaccinate those in developing countries.
The call from the four leaders comes amid speculation that the plan to lift all remaining social restrictions in England on June 21 could be delayed, thanks to rising cases of the so-called Indian variant of Covid. Indeed, when speaking on Monday, environment secretary George Eustice said that the government couldn’t rule out a potential delay to the next milestone of the roadmap out of lockdown.
Meanwhile at the time of writing, just over 48 per cent of UK adults have been fully vaccinated against Covid having received both doses, and 75 per cent of UK adults have been given at least their first dose.
The government is already planning for updated Covid vaccines to be rolled out in the autumn to help protect the public against new variants of the virus.
Elsewhere in the article, the four authors have urged wealthier nations to commit $50 billion, most of which would be distributed in the form of grants to help developing nations rollout Covid vaccines. They also recommend that the target of vaccinating 30 per cent of the global population by the end of the year should be increased to 40 per cent, with a later target of vaccinating 60 per cent of the world by the first half of 2022.
The Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access [COVAX] initiative is an already functional international effort to help make Covid vaccines accessible to populations in poorer countries and is partly run through the World Health Organization. On Monday, over 100 cross-party MPs and peers called on prime minister Boris Johnson to donate a dose of the vaccine to the COVAX scheme for every dose that is purchased for use in the UK.
The UK has already committed half a billion to the COVAX scheme, with 40 million doses distributed across 117 countries.
In spite of this headway, the four leaders of the international institutions insist more must be done, with some lower income nations having received less than one per cent of the total Covid vaccines distributed worldwide to date.
The article says: “Even as some affluent countries are already discussing the rollout of booster shots to their populations, the vast majority of people in developing countries – even frontline health workers – have still not received their first shot.”
The quartet have suggested that a three-point plan is implemented to try to address the issue, including raising the targets for vaccinations worldwide, insuring against risks posed by new variants by lining up booster shots to be distributed, and increasing vaccine distribution, testing capacity, and supply of key equipment such as oxygen tanks.
“It calls for upfront financing, upfront vaccine donations and upfront precautionary investments and planning, rather than commitments that may be slow to materialise", the article adds.
“Investing $50 billion to end the pandemic is potentially the best use of public money we will see in our lifetimes. But the window of opportunity is closing fast. Ending the pandemic is a solvable problem that requires global action – now. Let's all pull together and get the job done.”
