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While the United States faces the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression because of COVID-19, a subset of corporations is reaping dramatic profits that are flowing to their already wealthy, mostly white male shareholders, further exacerbating existing inequalities, according to a new analysis released by Oxfam today.

The Coronavirus crisis could result in a catastrophic loss of life in poorer countries and push half a billion more people into poverty. This week, the G20 finance ministers, the IMF and the World Bank can offer an instant lifeline – by cancelling all external debt payments for 2020. This could save $40 billion immediately and support almost 500 million of the world’s poorest to survive this crisis.

A one-off 99 percent levy on billionaires’ wealth gains during the pandemic could pay for everyone on Earth to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and provide a $20,000 cash grant to all unemployed workers, according to new analysis released today by Oxfam, the Fight Inequality Alliance, the Institute for Policy Studies and the Patriotic Millionaires.

In reaction to Pfizer’s announcement of voluntary licenses of its COVID-19 oral antiviral treatment Paxlovid to the Medicines Patent Pool, People’s Vaccine Alliance spokesperson and Oxfam America’s Senior Advocacy Advisor, Robbie Silverman, said: “Pfizer’s announcement to voluntarily licence the COVID treatment Paxlovid is welcome but is far from enough."     

An article in the British Medical Journal and Die Welt, published today, has found that the KenUP Foundation - acting as a consultant on behalf of BioNTech – has been pushing South African manufacturers not to get involved the World Health Organization Vaccine Technology Transfer Hub’s project of copying the manufacturing process of existing mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and have been calling for the project to be ‘terminated immediately’. 

In reaction to the newly announced $10.3 billion UN Humanitarian Response Plan (UNHRP) appeal, Oxfam’s Head of Humanitarian Campaigns and Advocacy, Fionna Smyth, said: “We welcome this boost to the UN Covid-19 humanitarian appeal. Millions of people around the world already struggling to cope with crises brought about by conflict, poverty and climate change, have been hit even harder now by the coronavirus pandemic which has also fuelled a hunger crisis. This funding is lifesaving and urgently needed, yet less than a quarter of the previous appeal had been met."     

The United States government last night moved to support a waiver of intellectual property protections of the Covid-19 vaccine. The People’s Vaccine Alliance has been campaigning to suspend Covid-19 intellectual property protections and has this reaction: This is the decision the world needed: by backing a waiver of intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines the Biden Administration can increase the global supply of vaccines and deal a deathblow to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Oxfam India welcomes the US decision to back the waiver of intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines.  

Vaccinating the poorest half of humanity —3.7 billion people— against coronavirus could cost less than what the ten biggest pharmaceutical companies make in four months, Oxfam said today. 

Ahead of shareholder meetings for the giant pharmaceutical corporations, the People’s Vaccine Alliance calculates that Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca have paid out $26 billion in dividends and stock buybacks to their shareholders in the past 12 months.