LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th May, 2021) The UK Committee for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) on Wednesday called on the government to start sharing 20% of its available COVID-19 vaccines with low-income countries from June, in order to prevent further spread of the coronavirus variants and aid global recovery from the pandemic.
According to UNICEF UK, the United Kingdom is expected to have 347 million doses available by the end of 2021, while its 66.7 million inhabitants account for less than 1% of the world's population, so once every adult in the country has been vaccinated there would be enough surplus to fully immunize 50 million people globally.
"The UK has done a fantastic job in rolling out Covid-19 vaccines to more than half of its adult population and we should all be proud of what has been achieved. However, we can't ignore that the UK and other G7 countries have purchased over a third of the world's vaccine supply, despite making up only 13% of the global population - and we risk leaving low-income countries behind," Joanna Rea, director of advocacy at UNICEF UK, said in a statement.
She claimed that unless the UK and the rest of the world's seven richest economies start sharing their COVID-19 vaccine surplus with other countries, the UK will not be safe from the disease.
The UK government has already pledged to share its vaccine surplus through COVAX, an initiative created by the World Health Organization and other organizations for equitable and affordable access to COVID-19 vaccines, but according to the charity's official donations should start in June at the latest.
"Put simply, surplus dose sharing is a matter of life or death. We need the UK Government to deliver on their pledge to share doses -and for that to start now if there is any hope of ending this pandemic," she said.
As of Tuesday, 35.5 million people in the UK had received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine as part of the vaccination campaign that began in December.
The government's plan is that all the adult population, estimated at 53 million, would be offered a vaccine by the end of July.
