We can’t afford inaction. The funds needed are a fraction of the trillions Covid is costing us
This June, President Biden will fly into Britain to attend his first summit of the world’s richest nations. The routine meetings of the G7 – made up of the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States and the European Union – come and go, and are quickly forgotten, but this time around there is an opportunity not to be wasted. The principal item on the agenda should be health: the mass vaccination of the world.
As things stand, affluent countries accounting for 18% of the world’s population have bought 4.6bn doses – 60% of confirmed orders. About 780m vaccines have been administered to date, but less than 1% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa have been injected. Immunising the west but only a fraction of the developing world is already fuelling allegations of “vaccine apartheid”, and will leave Covid-19 spreading, mutating and threatening the lives and livelihoods of us all for years to come.
