COVID-19: UNICEF Calls on UK to Denote 20% of Vaccines to Other Countries

The United Nations of Children's Fund (UNICEF) called the UK for donating 20% of its COVID-19 vaccines to the other countries that need vaccines in early June, The Guardian reported on Wednesday.

The report highlighted that the UK will have spare vaccines enough for vaccinating at least 50 million people which drove the organization to urge UK to share them with G7 states for example. Sharing those doses will help other countries to compete against the virus and control the outbreak of the new variants.

“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,” the Director of Advocacy at UNICEF UK Joanna Rea underscored.

UNICEF launched its initiative before the upcoming G7 Summit in the UK, however, the French President called Europe and the US to share their vaccine doses.

He told the Financial Times: “We’re not talking about billions of doses immediately, or billions and billions of euros,” adding, “It’s about much more rapidly allocating 4-5% of the doses we have."

The French President highlighted: "It won’t change our vaccination campaigns, but each country should set aside a small number of the doses it has to transfer tens of millions of them, but very fast, so that people on the ground see it happening.”

In the same context, US President Joe Biden undertook to send 60 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses.