Giving Compass' Take:
- Helen Lock, at Global Citizen, discusses the UK's efforts to follow through on its promise to share vaccines with other nations, six months after the initial declaration.
- While initial vaccine deliveries are important, they're just the beginning of a much bigger process. How can we hold the UK -- and other nations with large quantities of COVID vaccines -- accountable in sharing their surpluses?
- Read about why wealthy countries should focus on sharing -- not hoarding -- vaccines.
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Shipments of nine million COVID-19 vaccine doses are being delivered from the UK to countries around the world this week to help fight the pandemic.
The deliveries are much needed because, while around 70% of the UK’s adult population has so far received two doses of the vaccine, in the world’s poorest countries only 1.4% of people have been vaccinated, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Some countries including Burundi, North Korea, and Eritrea, have yet to start a vaccination programme with limited access to a vaccine supply and health inequalities hampering the roll-out.
According to the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office, five million of the doses being shipped out will go to COVAX, the vaccine sharing facility set up to ensure low- and middle-income countries have access to COVID-19 vaccines.
According to the government, this shipment is the first tranche of the 100 million vaccines Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged the UK would share within the next year at June’s G7 summit in Cornwall, with 30 million of those doses due by the end of this year.
It comes several months after the UK government first indicated it would share the country’s surplus COVID-19 vaccines — with Johnson first saying they would do so in February.
As the UK had by then secured at least 100 million more doses than was required to cover its population, Global Citizen and other NGOs called on the government to start sharing vaccines much more quickly, and in greater amounts to meet vast global demand.
Marie Rumsby, Global Citizen’s UK Country Director said: “It’s great that they have started sharing vaccines now — and those nine million will make a huge difference to those who receive them — but we need more urgency.”
Read the full article about sharing COVID-19 vaccines by Helen Lock at Global Citizen.