The UK ordered nearly 400 million doses of Covid vaccines for the entire population in the country. However, the country will have a surplus of doses once all the adults in the UK have received their shots. Therefore, the Prime Minister of the UK, Boris Johnson, recently pledged to donate these extra doses to poor countries.
The PM also recommended the rich countries back the research conducted for new vaccines. Meanwhile, the anti-poverty campaigners are not satisfied with this decision. They believe that the country can offer more to other nations. The UK will later decide how many vaccine doses they will give away this year. Also, the authorities will keep a record of the supply chain and the vaccine booster shots.
Boris Johnson during his virtual G7 meeting mentioned that science is finally leading against the coronavirus infection. Also, we need to make sure that all the countries receive the Covid vaccines so that the pandemic can come to an end. He also said that vaccinating the individual populations will not help against the virus.
Coronavirus pandemic is a global infection and every country needs to come together to fight this disease. The group also supported affordable vaccination and testing to make this accessible to everyone.
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According to Emmanuel Macron, the French President, rich countries should give away at least 4 to 5% of the coronavirus vaccines stock to poor countries. Meanwhile, James Cleverly, the Foreign Office minister of the UK said that the country will donate more doses than that. He also mentioned that the UK will play its role in overcoming the pandemic by supporting other countries.
The government sources also informed that the UK will give away more than half the surplus doses of coronavirus vaccines to Covax. This is an initiative by the UN to provide better access to other countries.
Nearly 17 million individuals in the UK received their first shot of the coronavirus vaccines. Meanwhile, 573,724 individuals have received their second dose as well.
Most of the wealthy countries bought an excessive amount of the vaccines in the beginning. Meanwhile, as the shots are now rolling out, most of them will have a huge surplus. These countries funded the research towards developing the vaccine and they secured a huge number of doses.
The UK donated £548m to the UN-led program, Covax. Until now, nearly 130 countries have not received any vaccines against the virus. These countries did not start their vaccination programs and their health care workers are still at a huge risk. Meanwhile, Covax can only support 20% population from each country. This means that this program is not enough to provide enough vaccine doses to every country.
Several countries started rolling out the coronavirus vaccines recently and saw a significant drop in the number of cases. However, these efforts are not enough to end the pandemic if every country can not provide the vaccine to its population. Also, the coronavirus is rapidly mutating across the world which means that the authorities need to speed up the vaccination process.
