‘Share dollars and doses’: G20 summit tackles COVID inequalities

Vaccine producers and the world’s leading economies attempt to find ways to help poorer nations inoculate populations.

Big pharmaceutical companies and leaders of leading economies of the world faced up on Friday to the startling global imbalance in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and made big pledges to up supplies of cut-price vaccines to poorer regions. Lavishly-funded mass inoculation campaigns are helping some wealthy nations slash infections, but few shots have reached poorer nations where the virus is still raging, sometimes uncontrollably, drawing accusations of “vaccine apartheid”. More than 80 percent of the first billion shots went to rich countries, compared with just 0.2 percent for low-income nations, philanthropist Bill Gates told Friday’s special Group of 20 summit, which focused on the global health crisis.