G7 pandemic pledges too little, too late

G7 pandemic pledges too little, too late

GENEVA: The G7's vow to share a billion COVID vaccine doses with poorer nations is too little too late, according to the WHO and global health leaders, as experts warned yesterday more than 11 billion shots are needed. Faced with outrage over disparities in access to jabs, the Group of Seven industrialized powers pledged during a weekend summit in Britain to increase dose donations to over one billion.

"We welcome the generous announcements about donations of vaccines and thank leaders“¦ but we need more, and we need them faster,“ World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement Sunday. While people in many wealthy nations are enjoying a return to a sense of normalcy thanks to high vaccination rates, the shots remain scarce in less well-off parts of the world. In terms of doses administered, the imbalance between the G7 and low-income countries, as defined by the World Bank, is 73 to one.

Many of the donated doses will be filtered through Covax, a global body charged with ensuring equitable vaccine distribution. Run by the WHO, the Gavi vaccine alliance and CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, it has to date shipped 85 million vaccine doses to 131 countries “”