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* G7 to pledge 1 billion vaccine doses
* Campaigners: G7 too slow, lacks ambition
* Britain to give 100 million doses
* UK says some countries using vaccines to hold sway
(Adds details, reaction)
By Kate Holton and Alistair Smout
CARBIS BAY, England, June 11 (Reuters) - A Group of Seven
plan to donate 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to poorer
countries lacks ambition, is far too slow and shows Western
leaders are not yet up to the job of tackling the worst public
health crisis in a century, campaigners said on Friday.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he expected G7
leaders to agree the donations as part of a plan to inoculate
the world's nearly 8 billion people against the coronavirus by
the end of next year.
After U.S. President Joe Biden vowed to supercharge the
battle against the virus with a donation of 500 million Pfizer
shots, Johnson said Britain would give at least 100
million vaccines within the next year. Other pledges may follow.
But health and anti-poverty campaigners said that while the
donations were a step in the right direction, Western leaders
had shown a lack of ambition and a failure to grasp the
exceptional efforts needed to beat the virus.
"The new U.S. and UK commitments are a step in the right
direction, but they don't go far enough, fast enough," said Alex
Harris, director of government relations at Wellcome, a
London-based science and health charitable foundation.
"What the world needs is vaccines now, not later this year.
At this historic moment, the G7 must show the political
leadership our crisis demands," said Harris. "We urge G7 leaders
to raise their ambition."
The race to bring an end to a pandemic that has killed
around 3.9 million people globally and sown social and economic
destruction will feature prominently at the three-day summit
which begins on Friday in the English seaside resort of Carbis
Bay.
British foreign minister Dominic Raab warned that other
countries were using vaccines as diplomatic tools to secure
influence. Britain and the United States said their
donations would come with no strings attached.
COVID-19 has ripped through the global economy, with
infections reported in more than 210 countries and territories
since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
'FAILURE'
As most people need two vaccine doses, and possibly booster
shots to tackle emerging variants, campaigners said the G7
commitments marked a start but that world leaders needed to go
much further, and much faster.
"If the best G7 leaders can manage is to donate 1 billion
vaccine doses then this summit will have been a failure,"
Oxfam's health policy manager Anna Marriott said, adding that
the world would need 11 billion doses to end the pandemic.
Vaccination efforts so far are heavily correlated with
wealth: the United States, Europe, Israel and Bahrain are far
ahead of other countries. A total of 2.2 billion people have
been vaccinated according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Oxfam also called on G7 leaders to support a waiver on the
intellectual property behind the vaccines.
French President Emmanuel Macron has said intellectual
property rights should not hinder access to vaccines during a
pandemic, and that Paris would join South Africa in proposing
that nations work on a limited easing of rules.
Biden has already backed a proposed patent waiver for
vaccines targeting the novel coronavirus that advocates say
could help boost availability.
VACCINE OWNERSHIP?
The pharmaceutical industry has opposed it, saying it would
stifle innovation and do little to effectively increase vaccine
supplies. Britain, which backed Oxford-AstraZeneca's
not-for-profit shot, has said a patent waiver is not necessary.
Of the 100 million British shots, 80 million will go to the
COVAX programme led by the World Health Organization (WHO) and
the rest will be shared bilaterally with countries in need.
Johnson echoed Biden in calling on his fellow leaders to
make similar pledges and for pharmaceutical companies to adopt
the not-for-profit model during the pandemic. The U.S. Pfizer
donations will be supplied at cost.
Leaving poorer countries to deal with the pandemic alone
risks allowing the virus to further mutate and evade vaccines,
scientists have warned. Charities have also said that logistical
support will be needed to help administer large numbers of
vaccines in poorer countries.
The British doses will be drawn from the stock it has
already procured for its domestic programme, and will come from
suppliers Oxford-AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Janssen, Moderna
and others.
(Reporting by Kate Holton and Alistair Smout; Editing by Guy
Faulconbridge, Alex Richardson and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
