●   The UK will do­nate at least 100 mil­lion sur­plus coro­n­avirus vac­cine dos­es with­in the next year, in­clud­ing 5 mil­lion be­gin­ning in the com­ing weeks.

●   Do­na­tion is in ad­di­tion to UK work to sup­port Ox­ford-As­traZeneca’s con­tri­bu­tion to fight­ing Covid and our fi­nan­cial back­ing to CO­V­AX.

●   G7 lead­ers are ex­pect­ed to agree to pro­vide 1 bil­lion dos­es via dose shar­ing and fi­nanc­ing to end the pan­dem­ic in 2022.

Port of Spain, 11 June 2021 — The UK will do­nate 100 mil­lion sur­plus coro­n­avirus vac­cine dos­es to the world with­in the next year, the Prime Min­is­ter [Boris John­son] has an­nounced to­day (Fri­day). 

The pledge comes ahead of the G7 Sum­mit, which be­gins in Corn­wall to­day. Last week the Prime Min­is­ter asked fel­low G7 lead­ers to help vac­ci­nate the en­tire world by the end of next year. 

At the Sum­mit world lead­ers are ex­pect­ed to an­nounce they will pro­vide at least 1 bil­lion coro­n­avirus vac­cine dos­es to the world through dose shar­ing and fi­nanc­ing and set out a plan to ex­pand vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ing in or­der to achieve that goal. 

The UK will do­nate 5 mil­lion dos­es by the end of Sep­tem­ber, be­gin­ning in the com­ing weeks, pri­mar­i­ly for use in the world’s poor­est coun­tries. The Prime Min­is­ter has al­so com­mit­ted to do­nat­ing a fur­ther 95 mil­lion dos­es with­in the next year, in­clud­ing 25 mil­lion more by the end of 2021. 80% of the 100m dos­es will go to CO­V­AX and the re­main­der will be shared bi­lat­er­al­ly with coun­tries in need. 

By shar­ing 5 mil­lion dos­es in the com­ing weeks the UK will meet an im­me­di­ate de­mand for vac­cines for the coun­tries worst af­fect­ed by coro­n­avirus with­out de­lay­ing com­ple­tion of our ini­tial do­mes­tic vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.

By vac­ci­nat­ing more peo­ple around the world not on­ly will we help bring an end to the glob­al coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, we will re­duce the risk to peo­ple in the UK. This in­cludes sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing the threat posed by vac­cine-re­sis­tant vari­ants emerg­ing in ar­eas with large-scale out­breaks. 

The UK helped to es­tab­lish CO­V­AX last year and is its fourth biggest donor, pledg­ing £548m to the scheme. CO­V­AX has so far pro­vid­ed 81 mil­lion dos­es to 129 of the world’s poor­est coun­tries. 96% of these were the Ox­ford-As­traZeneca vac­cine, the de­vel­op­ment of which was fund­ed by the UK.  

With the sup­port of the UK Gov­ern­ment, Ox­ford-As­traZeneca are dis­trib­ut­ing their vac­cines on a not for prof­it ba­sis to the world. Thanks to this com­mit­ment, half a bil­lion peo­ple have re­ceived a dose of the Ox­ford-As­traZeneca so far. 

The Prime Min­is­ter said:

“Since the start of this pan­dem­ic the UK has led the way in ef­forts to pro­tect hu­man­i­ty against this dead­ly dis­ease. Over a year ago we fund­ed the de­vel­op­ment of the Ox­ford-As­traZeneca vac­cine on the ba­sis it would be dis­trib­uted at cost to the world. 

“This un­prece­dent­ed mod­el, which puts peo­ple square­ly above prof­it, means over half a bil­lion dos­es have been ad­min­is­tered in 160 coun­tries so far. 

“As a re­sult of the suc­cess of the UK’s vac­cine pro­gramme we are now in a po­si­tion to share some of our sur­plus dos­es with those who need them. In do­ing so we will take a mas­sive step to­wards beat­ing this pan­dem­ic for good. 

“At the G7 Sum­mit I hope my fel­low lead­ers will make sim­i­lar pledges so that, to­geth­er, we can vac­ci­nate the world by the end of next year and build back bet­ter from coro­n­avirus.” 

At the G7 lead­ers will al­so dis­cuss how to ex­pand the sup­ply of vac­cines in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, with the Prime Min­is­ter ask­ing the group to en­cour­age phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies to adopt the Ox­ford-As­traZeneca mod­el of pro­vid­ing vac­cines of cost for the du­ra­tion of the pan­dem­ic. Pfiz­er, Mod­er­na and John­son & John­son have al­ready pledged to share 1.3 bil­lion dos­es on a non-prof­it ba­sis with de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. 

Lead­ers are ex­pect­ed to dis­cuss ad­di­tion­al ways to sup­port coun­tries ex­pe­ri­enc­ing acute coro­n­avirus emer­gen­cies and put in place mech­a­nisms to pre­vent fu­ture pan­demics. This fol­lows on from com­mit­ments made at the vir­tu­al meet­ing of G7 lead­ers ear­li­er this year. 

The cost of do­nat­ing the UK’s sur­plus­es will be clas­si­fied as ODA. This will be in ad­di­tion to the £10bn al­ready com­mit­ted in aid this year. 

The dos­es the UK has an­nounced it will do­nate to­day will be drawn from the UK’s ex­pect­ed ex­cess sup­ply. The 100 mil­lion fig­ure has been cal­cu­lat­ed based on the to­tal need­ed to vac­ci­nate the UK pop­u­la­tion, fac­tor­ing in the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fu­ture vac­cine-re­sis­tant strains be­ing de­tect­ed and po­ten­tial dis­rup­tions to our sup­ply. 

Lat­er this year the UK will al­so host the UN cli­mate change con­fer­ence, COP26. To­day the UK is al­so an­nounc­ing that in or­der to en­able more rep­re­sen­ta­tives to at­tend safe­ly we will work to pro­vide vac­cines to those ac­cred­it­ed del­e­ga­tions who would be un­able to get them oth­er­wise. We are ex­plor­ing with the UN and part­ners how we can work to­geth­er to de­liv­er this of­fer.

This will mean that those coun­tries most af­fect­ed by cli­mate change are bet­ter able to par­tic­i­pate ful­ly in dis­cus­sions about cre­at­ing a green­er fu­ture for the plan­et.