* 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 UN comment)
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 on top of tackling the worst public health
crisis in a century, campaigners said on Friday.
While the head of the United Nations welcomed the move, even
he said more was needed. Antonio Guterres warned that if people
in developing countries were not inoculated quickly, the virus
could mutate further and become resistant to the new vaccines.
"We need more than that," he said of the G7 plan. "We need a
global vaccination plan. We need to act with a logic, with a
sense of urgency, and with the priorities of a war economy, and
we are still far from getting that."
U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris
Johnson had used the G7 summit in England to announce the
donation of 500 million and 100 million vaccines respectively
for the world's poorest nations.
Canada is expected to commit to sharing up to 100 million
doses and other pledges may follow after Johnson urged G7
leaders to help inoculate the world's nearly 8 billion people
against the coronavirus by the end of next year.
But health and anti-poverty campaigners said that, while
donations were a step in the right direction, Western leaders
had failed to grasp that exceptional efforts were 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, challenged the G7 to show the political
leadership the crisis demanded.
"What the world needs is vaccines now, not later this year,"
he said. "We urge G7 leaders to raise their ambition."
'FAILURE'
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.
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.
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.
As most people need two vaccine doses, and possibly booster
shots to tackle emerging variants, charity Oxfam said the world
would need 11 billion doses to end the pandemic.
"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.
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. donation
of Pfizer shots will be supplied at cost.
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, Michelle
Nichols in New York and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by
Guy Faulconbridge, Alex Richardson, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and
Catherine Evans)
Astrazeneca (AZN)
