Pressure on G7 leaders to deliver Covid vaccines for whole world

Nobel winners and former PM call for action to supply life-saving jabs to poor countries

(Getty Images)

World leaders meeting at the G7 in Cornwall this week have been challenged to take steps to ensure global herd immunity from Covid-19, with 15 of the UK’s Nobel laureates calling on Boris Johnson to back an intellectual property waiver on treatments and vaccines.

Former prime minister Gordon Brown warned that the summit of the world’s leading democracies will be “a life and death matter”, urging them to agree to “burden-share the financing of the whole medical effort”.

Mr Johnson’s call for G7 members - including the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Japan - to ensure the whole world is vaccinated against coronavirus by the end of 2022 cannot be met simply by sharing surplus doses, warned Mr Brown.

In their letter, the Nobel Prize winners warned that the multilateral COVAX effort to supply vaccine doses to low-income nations “will not halt the spread of this virus”, as it only aims to vaccinate up to 30% of participating nations’ populations and is currently lagging far behind targets.

They called on Mr Johnson to “show the values of a truly Global Britain ‘’ and join US President Joe Biden in supporting an intellectual property waiver - first proposed eight months ago by India and South Africa - to allow low and middle-income countries to build domestic vaccine production capacities.

The waiver is “an essential step to increase production” alongside measures to ensure that pharmaceutical companies share vaccine technology and know-how through the World Health Organisation’s Covid-19 Technology Access Pool, they said.

And they warned: “Last year, science was the main barrier to beating this disease; but today, it is inequality.”

Signatory Sir Richard Roberts, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in medicine, said: “The scientific case for this is clear. If we allow Covid-19 to spread around the globe for years, not only will millions needlessly die, but the virus will continue to mutate into more virulent strains.

“That could undo all of our work - including the work of British scientists - in developing effective vaccines and will likely prolong the pandemic for years. We don’t have time for politicking. The intellectual property barriers to vaccine production are hindering local production of vaccines, especially in low and middle income countries, and they must be cleared away.”

The Biden administration announced last month that the United States would support an intellectual property waiver and a number of European leaders have since announced their support, while Japan has signaled it will not block the waiver. But the British and German governments have so far refused to back the waiver proposal.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire said: “With high vaccination rates in rich countries while low and middle-income nations suffer, we are watching a system of vaccine apartheid develop. There is no justification for the needless loss of life in the months since India and South Africa first requested an intellectual property waiver.

“These are global public goods, developed largely with public funding; they belong to all of us. Boris Johnson must do what is right and support this waiver, for all of humanity”.

According to the People’s Vaccine Alliance, G7 nations vaccinated at a rate of 4.6 million people a day in May, meaning their populations should be fully inoculated by 8 January 2022. But at the current rate of 63,000 people a day it would take low-income countries 57 years to reach the same level of protection.

Speaking to the Chatham House thinktank, Mr Brown said that the Carbis Bay summit was expected to deliver a huge and welcome extension of dose-sharing by the richest countries.

But he added: “All their announcements taken together will not be enough to reach the total of 11 billion doses that are needed worldwide to achieve the Johnson pledge.

“The failure to mass vaccinate worldwide, even when we have a vaccine, is one of the reasons why 2.5 million people worldwide have lost their lives since the vaccine was first available. A far greater death tally than in 2020.

“We need to do more than dose share, we need to burden share the financing of the whole medical effort.”

Mr Brown said that, after a year when international co-operation “failed dismally” in the face of the pandemic, the world now stands at a “turning point”.

“I think it’s no exaggeration to say that Friday’s G7 is a life and death matter,” he said. “Its decision will determine who is vaccinated and safe and who remains unvaccinated and at risk of dying.”

And he added: “We know what’s wrong, we are yet to put things right. We know global problems need global solutions and we are discovering that COVAX and other international organisations need the resources and support that are required to solve these problems.

“We can make a difference. We know that no-one is safe until everyone is safe. Friday must be that turning point where we start the building of that healthier, greener and fairer world.”