The French President, Emmanuel Macron, has lamented the uneven distribution of vaccines and called on Europe and the US to urgently send up to 5% of their coronavirus vaccine supplies to developing nations.
According to BBC news report, Macron bared his mind to the Financial Times that the failure to share vaccines fairly would further entrench global inequality, as poorer countries are even yet to commence their vaccination programs.
READ: Russia offers 300 million doses of its Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine – AU
Macron said, “We’re not talking about billions of doses immediately, or billions and billions of euros”
“It’s about much more rapidly allocating 4-5% of the doses we have”.
“It won’t change our vaccination campaigns, but each country should set aside a small number of the doses it has to transfer tens of millions of them, but very fast, so that people on the ground see it happening.”
READ: BUA purchases one million doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines for Nigerians
What you should know
- The US President Joe Biden is set to announce a pledge of $4bn (£8bn) in funding for a global vaccine-sharing scheme, known as Covax.
- Recently, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson – who chaired the G-7 meeting, had announced that he would as well be donating surplus doses to poorer countries.
- According to statistics from Johns Hopkins University, at least 110 million people have been infected with the virus worldwide and more than 2.4 million have died.
- With the support of German Chancellor, Angela Merkel in the European vaccine-sharing initiative, it is expected that the backing of the US would be won as well.
- According to Macron, “In the absence of such an initiative/scheme, China and Russia were filling the gap, paving the way for a war of influence over vaccines”
- 10 countries had administered 75% of all vaccinations worldwide, while 130 countries had not yet received a single dose.
- Richer nations have been accused of hoarding vaccines at the expense of poorer ones.
- It is to be noted that some wealthy nations, such as the UK and Canada, have ordered enough doses to vaccinate their populations more than once.
- Health experts have clearly warned that except the vaccines are shared more equitably, it could take quite longer for the pandemic to be brought under control, globally.