A new survey shows that 90 percent of people in scores of poor countries will not be given access to COVID-19 vaccines by the end of next year.
People’s Vaccine, an alliance of international groups such as Amnesty International and Oxfam, released a report on Wednesday and said 67 countries, including North Korea, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Myanmar, will be able to vaccinate only one out of every ten people against the virus next year.
The presumption is based on contracts each surveyed government has made or is making with eight major global vaccine developers.
The European Union and 11 countries including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., which represent only 14 percent of the global population, have signed deals for a whopping 53 percent of the vaccine products available from those developers, leaving some less affluent countries to resort to a World Health Organization initiative called COVAX Facility.
Noting that five billion U.S. dollars of public funding has been injected into the development of three major developers, AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, Oxfam urged them to act in the interest of the global public.