The UK is on course to “hoard” up to 210 million COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the year, research suggests, as ministers were accused of leaving poorer countries “fighting for scraps.”
Pressure is growing on the government to do more to help nations where tiny proportions of their population have had a first jab given that the UK is opposing a temporary waiver to intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines that would allow more firms abroad to manufacture the doses themselves.
About 467 million jabs are due to be delivered to the UK by the end of this year, data from life science analytics company Airfinity found.
Photo: AP
However, only 256.6 million jabs would be needed to fulfil the expected demand of vaccinating people over the age of 16 and giving a booster dose to the most vulnerable in autumn.
Given the average level of take-up for adults who have received a first and second dose stands at just more than 80 percent, if the same level was maintained for those eligible accepting all doses they are offered this year, that would leave a surplus of 210 million vaccines. Even if take-up were 100 percent, the figure would be 186 million.
These leftover jabs would help inoculate the about 211 million people living in the world’s 10 least vaccinated countries, said campaign group Global Justice Now, which collated the figures.
It is an “insult to the thousands dying each day” that the UK is offering third doses and preparing to vaccinate teenagers, while low and middle-income countries are left “fighting for scraps,” organization director Nick Dearden said.
The issue was compounded by the UK’s efforts to “obstruct” a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccines. The bid was tabled at the WTO in October last year by India and South Africa — and has since been backed by countries including the US, France and Italy.
Minutes from the most recent WTO meeting to discuss the proposal concluded that “disagreement persisted on the fundamental question of what is the appropriate and most effective way to address the shortage and inequitable access to vaccines,” with a decision now pushed back until October.
Dearden said the UK was “keeping the global south dependent on donations while hoarding limited vaccine supplies for ourselves” and called it an “obscene injustice.”
The government’s drive to roll out third doses from next month flies in the face of a call by the WHO for a moratorium on booster shots in a bid to vaccinate 10 percent of every country’s population by the end of next month. It estimates at least 60 to 70 percent of the world needs to be inoculated to reach “global immunity.”
The 10 nations with the smallest proportion of people vaccinated, according to Oxford University’s Our World In Data, are: the Democratic Republic of the Congo (0.005 percent), Haiti (0.003 percent), Burkina Faso (0.01 percent), Vanuatu (0.03 percent), South Sudan (0.04 percent), Yemen (0.04 percent), Chad (0.04 percent), Syria (0.05 percent), Guinea Bissau (0.06 percent) and Benin (0.1 percent).
The situation was akin to “vaccine apartheid,” said Max Lawson, Oxfam’s head of inequality policy.
“The British government is ignoring the WHO’s advice, issuing booster shots and dogmatically defending vaccine patents. It’s only going to prolong the pandemic, leading to more deaths and, ultimately, to mutations of coronavirus that could undermine the UK’s own vaccination program,” he said.
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