The G7 will commit to donating a billion vaccines

The G7 will commit to donating a billion vaccines to less favored countries, according to the draft of the final statement leaked by Bloomberg News. The statement also includes the request of the seven richest countries in the world to the World Health Organization (WHO) to open “a transparent investigation” into the origin of the coronavirus in China.

US President Joe Bidense anticipated his part by announcing as soon as he arrived in the United Kingdom his country's commitment to purchase 500 million doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine for a hundred countries. Biden distanced himself last week by announcing the initial shipment of 80 million doses to India, Gaza, the West Bank and several countries in South America, Africa and Southeast Asia through Covax, the global vaccine access initiative.

Biden was thus ahead of his host, Boris Johnson, who has not yet committed to donating a specific number of vaccines and who has received harsh criticism these days by deputies from his own party (including the former “premier”, Theresa May) for the cut from 0.7% to 0.5% of the International Cooperation budget.

“No one will be protected until we are all protected,” Johnson wrote in a column published in The Times, in which he called on “the most technologically advanced democracies” to pitch in on the equitable distribution of vaccines.

The UK has purchased over 500 million doses to date (for a population of 66 million) and has pledged to donate part of its stock. According to The Sunday Times, Johnson could announce the donation of up to 100 million doses, more than those inoculated to date to the British population.

Despite the success of the vaccination campaign (with more than 40 million recipients of the first dose and 23 million of both), the number of daily infections has shot up again to 11,900 due to the spread of the Indian variant. Given the rebound in cases, Johnson himself will have to decide next week whether to delay the end point of the de-escalation, initially scheduled for June 21.

During his appearance in Parliament, Health Secretary Matt Hancock acknowledged concern about the increase in cases and expressed the Government's intention to accelerate plans for the second vaccine “to protect the population”. Hancock also called for “greater transparency” from China in a hypothetical new investigation into the origin of the pandemic in Wuhan.

At the initiative of Joe Biden, the G7 will also demand the WHO investigation during the Carbis Bay summit. The US president has already decided on his own to extend the investigation of his intelligence agencies, among which there is a difference of opinion between the “natural” origin (due to the transmission of Covid-19 from animals to humans) or the possible leak from a laboratory in Wuhan.

The first “in situ” investigation by WHO experts, carried out under the supervision of the Chinese authorities, concluded that the hypothesis of the virus leaking from a laboratory is “extremely unlikely”.