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G7 health ministers to discuss vaccine sharing

03 June 2021 20:44 (UTC +04:00)

There is a meeting of G7 health ministers being held in Oxford later today - ahead of the fully-fledged G7 summit in the UK next week - to discuss, among other issues, sharing vaccines with poorer countries, APA reports citing BBC.

Eighteen countries in Africa have either run out of Covid vaccines already, or will run out in the next couple of weeks.

The shortfall is primarily down to the crisis in India, which has resulted in doses from the main supplier, the Serum Institute, being diverted for use domestically.

Unicef wants G7 countries, together with the EU, to donate 20% of their vaccine doses in June, July and August, to help plug the gap.

For the UK, that would mean giving just over four million doses this month. For the US, it’s almost 27 million doses.

This week, many rich nations promised another £1.7bn ($2.4bn) to help get vaccines into poorer countries.

But with manufacturers unable to keep up with demand, and a few wealthy countries hoarding so many of the currently available doses, it’s the world’s poorest who remain last in line to be vaccinated.