G7 leaders must come up with plan to throw out 100 million COVID - 19 vaccines

Gordon Brown speaks at an event in Edinburgh, Scotland, England, January 17, 2019. June 21 -- September 19 -- LONDON - Sept 19 Reuters - A vaccine summit is being hosted by US president Gordon Brown must come up with a plan this week to transfer 100 million army stocks of COVID - 19 vaccines to poorer countries before they reach their expiry date, former British Prime Minister Joe Biden said.

Biden is due to convene a virtual COVID - 19 summit on Wednesday at the margins of the U.N. General Assembly aimed at increasing vaccinations globally with the goal of ending the pandemic by the end of 2022. read more

Brown said he sent Biden and fellow G 7 leaders research by Airfinity, a scientific information and analytics company, which found 100 million COVID - 19 vaccines piled in rich countries in the northern hemisphere would expire by December without being used.

Out of 5.7 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines administered around the world, only 21% were in Africa.

Brown urges vaccinations to be distributed quickly. "We need a plan to distribute vaccines rapidly," said Brown, Britain's finance minister for a decade before serving as prime minister from 2007 to 2010.

It will be a global and collective political tragedy if this summit misses the opportunity to immediately transfer doses to poorer countries, he said.

The Airfinity data predicts that, without a speed-up in the vaccine roll-out, there will be 100 million more COVID-19 cases and one million more deaths due to lack of ventilators and oxygen by next summer.

It is unthinkable and unconscionable that 100 million vaccines will have to be thrown out from stockpiles of poor countries while population of the world's poorest countries will pay for our vaccine waste in lives lost, Brown said.

Brown asked the leaders to decide whether countries should swap delivery contracts, how regulatory barriers to vaccine exports could be overcome and who would underwrite costs of using stockpiled vaccines.

No one is safe anywhere until everyone is safe everywhere. It is in everyone's interest everywhere that President Biden and his fellow G7 leaders do what it takes to eradicate COVID in every corner of the world, he said.