UK surplus stock may lead to 'vaccine apartheid'

The United Kingdom will have a surplus stock of 210 million COVID-19 vaccine doses by the end of the year, as campaigners say poorer countries remain in desperate need of supplies.

Research from life science analytics company Airfinity suggests the UK will be receiving about 467 million vaccine doses by the end of this year. However, the expected demand for the nation, including booster shots in the fall, is only 256.6 million doses.

That mismatch has given rise to fears over "vaccine apartheid", expressed by Max Lawson, Oxfam's head of inequality policy, in The Guardian.

Campaign group Global Justice Now, which campaigns on issues of global justice and development, claims the surplus vaccines would help inoculate about 211 million people living in the world's 10 least-vaccinated countries.

Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, told The Guardian that low- and middle-income countries were left "fighting for scraps", which he said was an "insult to the thousands dying each day".

He said the issue is exacerbated by the UK opposing a temporary waiver to intellectual property rights for vaccines that would allow more companies overseas to produce jab doses themselves.

The proposal for the waiver was tabled at the World Trade Organization by India and South Africa in October, and now has backing from the United States, France and Italy.

But with persisting disagreement among nations at the most recent WTO meeting on the appropriate and most effective way to address the shortage and inequitable access to vaccines, a decision has been pushed back to October this year.

Less than 0.1 percent

According to analysis from Oxford University's Our World in Data, some of the countries with the smallest proportion of people vaccinated are the Democratic Republic of the Congo at 0.005 percent, Haiti at 0.003 percent, and Yemen at 0.04 percent.

The World Health Organization estimates that 60 to 70 percent of the world needs to be inoculated to reach global immunity.

The Guardian quoted Shami Chakrabarti, former Labour Party shadow attorney general, as saying UK government ministers were "closing down every avenue for low- and middle-income countries to access vaccines with sufficient speed and scale".

However, a government spokesperson said the UK is committed to supporting a global recovery to the COVID-19 pandemic and improving access to vaccines.

"We have committed to donate 100 million doses by June 2022, with the first deliveries starting last week," the spokesperson said.