G7 Reaction 2022

Responding to the G7 leaders’ communique, Julia Kosgei, Policy Advisor to the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said:

“After a year of broken promises over equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments, these platitudes from G7 leaders ring hollow. Rather than listening to developing countries and removing structural barriers like intellectual property rules, G7 leaders have largely repackaged their old pledges under a new banner.

“If G7 leaders actually want to save lives, they can immediately extend the limited patent waiver agreed for COVID-19 vaccines to also cover lifesaving treatments. And they can pledge not to stand in the way of developing countries that override intellectual property rules to produce generic COVID-19 medicines.

“This pandemic isn’t over. We have seen one preventable COVID-19 death every minute. Yet less than half of the vaccine donations promised by G7 leaders at last year’s summit have been delivered. What reason do developing countries have to trust G7 leaders to act in anyone’s interest but their own?”

/ Ends

Notes to editors

The G7 Leaders’ communique is available here, with pandemic response and global health discussed under the Healthy Lives section beginning on page 12.

Less than half of the 2.1 billion COVID vaccine donations promised to poorer countries by G7 countries have been delivered, analysis from Oxfam and the People’s Vaccine Alliance has found. Had the missing donated doses been shared in 2021, it could have been enough to save almost 600,000 lives, the equivalent of one every minute. Full story here.

Media contact:
Joe Karp-Sawey, Senior Media Advisor, People’s Vaccine Alliance
[email protected]