Coronavirus pandemic drove rich from global billionaires: report

During the first two years of the coronaviruses, the world's 10 wealthiest men doubled their fortunes as poverty and inequality soared, a report said on Monday.

Oxfam said that the men's wealth jumped from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion, at an average rate of $1.3 billion per day, during a briefing published before a virtual mini-summit of world leaders held under the auspices of the World Economic Forum.

Oxfam said the billionaires' wealth rose more than in the past 14 years when the world economy was suffering the worst recession since the 1929 Wall Street Crash, as a confederation of charities that focus on alleviating global poverty.

It called inequality economic violence and said inequality is contributing to the death of 21,000 people every day due to lack of access to healthcare, gender-based violence, hunger and climate change.

The charity said that 160 million people have been plunged into poverty because of the pandemic, with non-white ethnic minorities and women bearing the brunt of the impact as inequality soared.

The report follows a December 2021 study by the group that found that the share of global wealth of the world's richest people soared at a record pace during the epidemic.

Oxfam urged tax reforms to fund worldwide vaccine production, healthcare, climate adaptation and gender-based violence reduction to help save lives.

The group based its wealth calculations on the most up-to-date and comprehensive data sources, using the 2021 billionaires list compiled by the US business magazine Forbes.

The world's 10 richest men are: Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Google founder Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, former Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, US investor Warren Buffet and the head of French luxury group LVMH, Bernard Arnault.