LONDON: The Group of Seven leaders, who control a little under half of the world’s economy, have doubled their contribution and pledged billions of dollars to the UN-backed COVAX facility.
“We will intensify cooperation on the health response to COVID-19,” the leaders said in a joint statement after the meeting. “With new contributions from the EU, Germany, Canada, Japan, and US, the G7 has more than doubled its contributions to COVAX to $7.5B,” the UK’s presidency for G7 announced in a tweet.
COVAX was set aiming to ensure an equitable distribution of vaccines to countries and people in need. US President Joe Biden and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi debuted at the G7 virtual meeting chaired by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Johnson promised to free up any surplus UK vaccines for poorer countries at a future date and underlined the need for collective action to recover from the pandemic.
“We’ve got to make sure the whole world is vaccinated because this is a global pandemic and it’s no use one country being far ahead of another, we’ve got to move together,” he said in opening the virtual summit.
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At the G7, Biden pledged $4bn (3.3bn euros) in US aid to the COVAX fund to buy vaccines for global distribution. Germany said it was giving an extra 1.5 billion euros for the global rollout, and the European Union doubled its own COVAX funding to one billion euros. The total in G7 commitments stands at 7.5 billion euros, the group said in a joint statement following the talks.
World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus welcomed the G7’s move in stepping up their support for COVAX. “Without global solidarity this virus cannot be defeated,” he told the Munich Security Conference via video-link from Geneva.
The WHO chief said leaving poorer countries without immunisation will allow the coronavirus to mutate, and vaccines will become less effective, Tedros said. “We could end up back at square one,” he warned.
The virtual meeting was hosted by Johnson as the UK is the president of G7 for the year. The meeting is the first gathering of G7 leaders since April 2020, ahead of a summit in June this year in Cornwall, southwest England.
