UK

Less than half (49 per cent) of the 2.1 billion COVID vaccine donations promised to poorer countries by G7 countries have been delivered, according to new figures published today by Oxfam and the People’s Vaccine Alliance.  

Over a quarter of a billion more people could crash into extreme levels of poverty in 2022 because of COVID-19, rising global inequality and the shock of food price rises supercharged by the war in Ukraine, reveals a new Oxfam brief today. 

The global repercussions of the Ukraine crisis ―already being felt in fast-rising food, commodity and energy prices― could undermine official aid efforts to help people in other humanitarian hot-spots. 

The COVID-19 death toll has been four times higher in lower-income countries than in rich ones, according to a new report published today by Oxfam on behalf of the People’s Vaccine Alliance as the world marks two years since the World Health Organization declared the pandemic. 

Figures released today show licences worth at least £42.6 million were issued for arms exports to Saudi Arabia between July and September last year, many of which will be used in the war in Yemen. Since the conflict escalated, nearly seven years ago, over four million people have been forced from their homes with over 19,000 civilian casualties. 

“People have become complacent about COVID-19. Our global (health) funds are fast running out of money. Vaccine inequity is getting worse,” said former UK prime minister Gordon Brown today. 

The world’s ten richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion —at a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion a day— during the first two years of a pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall and over 160 million more people forced into poverty. 

More doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been delivered to the EU, the UK and the United States in the six-week run up to Christmas than African countries have received all year, new analysis from the People’s Vaccine Alliance reveals today.

New figures from the Peoples Vaccine Alliance reveal that the companies behind two of the most successful COVID vaccines – Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna – are making combined profits of $65,000 every minute. The figures based on the latest company reports are released as CEOs from pharmaceutical industry meet for the annual STAT summit —the equivalent of a ‘Big Pharma Davos’— from 16-18 November.

Responding to an International Labour Organisation’s report, ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the world of work, campaigners have called global vaccine inequality “a collective act of social and economic self-harm”.