The leaders of large pharmaceutical companies and the world’s major economies faced a shocking global imbalance on Friday in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and made substantial pledges to provide cheap vaccines to impoverished areas.

Generously funded mass vaccination campaigns are helping some wealthy countries to drastically reduce infections, but very few vaccines reach poorer countries, where the virus is still raging and sometimes uncontrolled, causing “vaccination apartheid” “The accusation.

Philanthropist Bill Gates said at a special summit on the G20 last Friday that more than 80% of the first billion injections went to rich countries, compared with only 0.2% in low-income countries.

“If we do not close this huge gap, then more people will die unnecessarily. Countries can take two actions immediately: share the dollar and the dose.” he????

The virtual summit is co-sponsored by the Italian President of the G20 and the EU executive agencies, including 20 heads of state and government and 12 international organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the African Union, the WTO and the World Bank.

The Reuters joint statement shows that it originally called for voluntary licensing and technology transfer to increase vaccine production, but it avoided the efforts of the United States and other countries to abandon valuable patents.

Vaccine manufacturers provide cheap vaccines

Several leading vaccine manufacturers made promises on Friday that appeared to be aimed at solving global imbalances.

Pfizer and BioNTech said they will provide 1 billion price-reduced doses to poorer countries this year.

Albert Bourla, the boss of Pfizer, said at the summit that another billion vaccines will be provided next year.

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said the American company will provide “up to 95 million doses” to poor countries through cost or discounts, and “up to 900 million doses” will be provided to poor countries by 2022, including through the COVAX vaccine sharing program. .

Johnson & Johnson promised to inject 200 million pills into COVAX led by the World Health Organization (WHO).

“In preparing for the next pandemic, our first priority must be to ensure that we all overcome the current pandemic together. We must vaccinate the world and do it quickly.” Italian Prime Minister Mario Della Ji (Mario Draghi) said.

Italian Prime Minister Draghi and the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Lein arrive in Rome to participate in the G20 virtual summit on the global health crisis in Rome [Yara Nardi/Reuters]

China pledges billions of dollars

Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to provide 3 billion US dollars in aid in the next three years to help developing countries recover from the pandemic, and proposed the establishment of an international forum to promote the equitable distribution of vaccines.

US President Joe Biden is not among the speakers.

His government supports calls from developing countries to abandon patents for the COVID-19 vaccine, hoping that this will increase production and achieve a more equitable distribution.

However, the final statement seen by Reuters did not mention this mechanism.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that existing global agreements already allow countries to force companies to share their licenses in emergency situations.

She added that the European Union will propose to use these terms, adding that Europe will donate at least 100 million doses to poorer countries by the end of the year, of which France and Germany will each donate 30 million doses.

Can’t solve the problem of shortage of funds

In the statement, world leaders pointed out the importance of the so-called ACT-Accelerator, which is a tool for WHO to distribute COVID-19 vaccines, drugs and tests worldwide.

However, the declaration did not meet the initial expectations, but did not make a clear commitment to provide all funds for the plan, which still has a shortfall of 19 billion US dollars.

Leaders agreed that one option to help poorer countries is to share vaccines that rich countries have already purchased.

However, there is no firm commitment to this in the final text.

Someone mentioned that the COVAX program, which is dedicated to the equitable distribution of global vaccines, is an option to provide donated doses to countries.