Johnson calls on G7 leaders to vaccinate world by end of 2022

BRITISH prime minister at next week's Group of Seven (G7) summit will urge leaders to commit to vaccinate the whole world by the end of 2022, Downing Street said in a statement on Saturday (5).

Britain will host the event in Cornwall in southwestern England starting June 11 with leaders of France, Italy, Japan, Germany, the United States and Canada attending.

Boris Johnson will call on fellow G7 leaders to make concrete commitments to "vaccinate the entire world against coronavirus by the end of 2022", the statement said.

"Vaccinating the world by the end of next year would be the single greatest feat in medical history," Johnson was quoted as saying.

He added "the world is looking to us to rise to the greatest challenge of the post-war era: defeating Covid and leading a global recovery driven by our shared values".

The British government in the statement also mentioned about its backing the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine development and making it available at a cost price around the world, also its support for the Covax scheme providing supplies to developing countries.

However, amid growing calls to ensure a fairer global distribution of vaccine doses, the G7 health ministers at a meeting on Friday (4) failed to break new ground. Saturday's Downing Street statement said later this week Johnson will announce more detail on plans by the British government to "share a significant majority of its surplus doses".

US treasury secretary Janet Yellen, now in London for the finance ministers meeting, said it was urgent for the G7 nations to promote vaccinations in poorer countries that could not afford to buy them.

She also repeated the US position that patent rights should be removed for the vaccines, and said they were doing everything they could to address supply chain problems that were preventing a build-up of shots in other parts of the world.

Britain by effectively rolling out its vaccination programme has managed to reduce hospitalisations, but the rising numbers of cases because of the Delta variant can hamper its progress.