G7 leaders will commit 1 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccine to the poorest countries

Leaders of the G7 economies that will meet in the UK will announce a commitment to deliver 1 billion coronavirus doses to the poorest countries as part of the 2022 “global integration” plan.

The move, which will unfold at the start of a three-day summit on Friday, is designed to address criticism that wealthy Western governments have assured most manufacturers of life-saving Covid-19 vaccines to include in their populations. The vote is an attempt by Beijing and Moscow to counter “vaccine diplomacy” as they quickly begin selling to developing nations.

According to supporters, Prime Minister Boris Johnson will announce on Friday that the G7 summit in Cornwall, the picturesque southern tip of Britain, will provide the UK with a surplus dose of 100 million vaccines.

Then a preliminary meeting with his host In Carbis Bay, on the rural Cornish coast, US President Joe Biden on Thursday unveiled a commitment to buy Covid-19 500m vaccines from BioNTech / Pfizer and donate them to some of the world’s poorest countries. This takes up 200m this year and the rest in the first half of next year.

“This is our responsibility, our humanitarian duty to save the lives we can,” Biden said.

The EU has committed 100 million doses this year to African countries and other developing nations.

Speaking at Elisha Palace on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron has said so The G7 would push for “lifting barriers” to speed up the vaccination rate in Africa by 40 per cent by the end of this year and 60 per cent by the end of the next first quarter.

Owners given by the U.S. and other G7 members would have to be “paired” with an additional commitment from doctors to provide the equivalent of 10 percent of dose production, Macron added.

British diplomats have called the Carbis Bay meeting a “vaccine summit” and stressed that the G7 countries will show a collective vision found in the face of Covid-19.

For four years when the club of wealthy democracies paralyzed Donald Trump in the face of the U.S. presidency and inwardly, Biden will use Monday’s G7 summit and trip to Brussels to reaffirm U.S. leadership in both the democratic and transatlantic worlds. collaboration.

Johnson said his interaction with Biden is “fresh air.” “There are a lot of things [we] they want to do it together, ”he said, referring to security, NATO and climate change.

Other issues on the agenda in the G7 countries (USA, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan) are climate change, girls ’education and economic recovery.

The group’s finance ministers have already approved the formation global corporate tax system, although the details are not fully agreed.

The fight against Johnson Covid is taking place at the heart of the summit, and to that end, on Friday, G7 leaders will gather for a year-long meeting at the Carbis Bay hotel boutique.

“This is the first time they will be working together with all ages,” a British official said. The reunion will feature a beach barbecue on Saturday night with Newlyn lobster caught locally and sparkling Cornish wine.

Johnson, the summit’s organizer, will urge G7 leaders to allow pharmaceutical companies to adopt non-profit vaccines in the pandemic to adopt the Oxford AstraZeneca model.

Downing Street said Pfizer, Modern and Johnson & Johnson have already pledged non-profit doses of 1.3 billion to non-profit developing countries.

Johnson has strongly criticized his lawmakers, including former Prime Minister Theresa May, for slashing Britain’s aid budget from 0.7% to 0.5% in a national income pandemic.

The summit will seek to agree on a unified approach to tackling future pandemics, with Johnson eager to avoid what Downing Street called “every man for himself,” as countries struggled to secure key supplies in the early days of the pandemic.

Johnson has invited leaders from Australia, India, South Africa and South Korea to attend, but British officials have tried to spread the idea of ​​turning the G7 into a democratic group against China. “This is who we are, not who we are against,” a British official said.

For Johnson, the peak is a chance for Britain to post-Brexit on a global scale, but the UK’s exit from the EU remains a challenge, especially around the new Northern Ireland agreements.

Additional report by Victor Mallet and David Keoan in Paris