* G7 to pledge 1 billion vaccine doses
* Campaigners say G7 too slow, lacks ambition
* Britain to give 100 million doses
* UK says some countries using vaccines to exert influence
(Adds quotes from former UK PM Brown, Canadian pledge)
By Kate Holton and Elizabeth Piper
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
fight against the virus with a donation of 500 million Pfizer
shots, Johnson said Britain would give at least 100
million vaccines within a year.
Canada is expected to commit to sharing up to 100 million
doses. Other pledges may follow.
But health and anti-poverty campaigners said that, while
donations were a step in the right direction, Western leaders
had failed to grasp the exceptional efforts needed to beat the
virus. Help with distribution was also necessary, they said.
Former British prime minister Gordon Brown, who has been
pushing for richer countries to share more of the cost of
vaccinating developing countries, said the G7 pledges were more
akin to "passing round the begging bowl" than a real solution.
"It's a catastrophic failure if we can't go away in the next
week or two ... with a plan that actually rids the world of
COVID now we've got a vaccine," he told Reuters.
Alex Harris at Wellcome, a London-based science and health
charitable foundation, said the pledges did not go far enough.
"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 end a pandemic that has killed around 3.9
million people and sown social and economic destruction will
feature prominently at the three-day summit which began 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 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, appearing to back Biden on the subject.
VACCINE OWNERSHIP?
But the pharmaceutical industry has opposed it, saying it
would stifle innovation and do little to increase 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.
Mass vaccination against the novel coronavirus is seen as
crucial to restoring economic growth and preventing the virus
from further mutation that could evade vaccines.
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, Johnson &
Johnson's Janssen, Moderna and others.
(Additional reporting by Alistair Smout in London and David
Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge, Alex
Richardson and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
Astrazeneca (AZN)
