{"id":64417,"date":"2022-04-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kuwaitnewsgazette.com\/?guid=f7db17014889f6e99f5d6058e1f1693c"},"modified":"2022-04-08T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T00:00:00","slug":"donors-pledge-extra-4-8-billion-to-fight-covid-vaccine-inequity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kuwaitnewsgazette.com\/donors-pledge-extra-4-8-billion-to-fight-covid-vaccine-inequity\/","title":{"rendered":"Donors Pledge Extra $4.8 Billion to Fight COVID Vaccine Inequity"},"content":{"rendered":"
An international donor conference on Friday raised $4.8 billion for the U.N.-backed COVAX plan to deliver coronavirus jabs to poorer countries, organizers said.<\/P>
“The pandemic is not over, far from it. Until we beat COVID-19 everywhere, we beat it nowhere. That is a fact, and a responsibility for all of us,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, co-host of the online conference.<\/P>
Scholz, whose bid to make COVID jabs mandatory for over-60s in Germany failed in parliament this week, warned that the ongoing pandemic risked creating new variants that could be “more dangerous” than previous ones.<\/P>
The conference, hosted by Germany, Ghana, Senegal and Indonesia, sought to address a yawning gap in vaccination rates between the world’s richest and poorest countries.<\/P>
The COVAX program, co-led by vaccine-sharing alliance Gavi, the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, has so far delivered 1.4 billion doses to 145 countries \u2014 far short of the planned 2 billion doses by the end of 2021.<\/P>
Governments from developed nations pledged $3.8 billion Friday to bring the vaccine to 92 low- and middle-income countries.<\/P>
Development banks including the World Bank and the European Investment Bank contributed $1 billion Friday.<\/P>
COVAX had said in January that it needed $5.2 billion to fund jabs for the world in 2022.<\/P>
The WHO wants 70% of every country’s population vaccinated by July.<\/P>
But records are uneven.<\/P>
Nearly 80% of France’s population, for example, has received two doses. But only 15% of the population on the continent of Africa is fully vaccinated, according to Oxford University data.<\/P>
COVAX says it currently has enough doses to vaccinate about 45% of the population in the 92 low- and middle-income countries receiving donations. But 25 of those countries lack the infrastructure for an effective immunization campaign.<\/P>
Making matters worse, many developing countries are slated to receive doses too close to their expiration date.<\/P>
“Vaccine inequity is the biggest moral failure of our times, and people and countries are paying the price,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said earlier this year.<\/P>
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Source: Voice of America<\/P>
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An international donor conference on Friday raised $4.8 billion for the U.N.-backed COVAX plan to deliver coronavirus jabs to poorer countries, organizers said.”The pandemic is not over, far from it. Until we beat COVID-19 everywhere, we beat it nowher…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n