Boris Johnson tells G7 summit ‘whole world’ must be vaccinated
It came after the Prime Minister pledged to donate the majority of the UK’s surplus vaccines to poorer nations.
In total, the UK has more than 400 million doses of vaccines on order – enough to vaccinate its population three times over.
But with some vaccines ordered yet to be approved by the UK medicines regulator and the domestic inoculation programme still in full flow, the Government has not yet put a date on when the first Covax donations will be made.
The PM addressed global leaders
He said: “Science is finally getting the upper hand on Covid, which is a great, great thing and long overdue.
“But there is no point in us vaccinating our individual populations – we’ve got to make sure the whole world is vaccinated because this is a global pandemic and it’s no use one country being far ahead of another, we’ve got to move together.
“So one of the things that I know that colleagues will be wanting to do is to ensure that we distribute vaccines at cost around the world – make sure everybody gets the vaccines that they need so that the whole world can come through this pandemic together.”
The UK has ordered more than 400 million doses
The Prime Minister used Friday’s online gathering to argue for an increase in funding for Covax, the multilateral global vaccine supply scheme being led by the World Health Organisation and other international bodies.
The push appeared to be well received, with the leaders issuing a joint statement afterwards agreeing to “intensify co-operation” on responding to the pandemic.
They committed to accelerating global vaccine development and deployment, including improving the sharing of information about the discovery of new variants, and cited 7.5 billion US dollars (£5.3 billion) of support coming from the G7 for the body behind Covax.
Oxfam welcomed the steps taken by the G7 but said they still remain “insufficient when compared to the scale of the Covid-19 threat”.