Covid-19: Vaccinations and Global Public Health

Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Boateng for bring us this debate this afternoon. The pandemic in the last 18 months has been devastating around the world, and 18 months down the line we are in a position to address it with the development of the vaccine that has helped us to protect lives.

COVAX was set up to ensure that the Covid vaccine reaches the world’s poorest countries. Its aim is to vaccinate healthcare workers, social care workers and those who are over 65 and high risk within a community. COVAX was created as a global procurement mechanism to distribute vaccine around the world. A recent report on economics intelligence from the Financial Times showed that low-income countries would have only 1.4% of the 5 billion vaccines delivered. This means that they will not be able to vaccinate 60% of their populations by mid-2022. The knock-on effect will plunge these countries into longer term debt. This debt will also spiral out of control, leading to increased poverty and reduced spending on countries’ health systems.

Another report which came out in July stated that 170,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine were at risk of expiring within two weeks. NHS doctors have also reported thousands of Pfizer and Moderna shots being discarded. There are signs that the Government are encouraging the pharmaceutical companies to share their know-how and technology to waive intellectual property, but there are also signs of hoarding of doses by high-income countries. This is said to be caused by the pharmaceutical companies, which have control over the vaccine.

The British Government have announced that they intend to donate 100 million doses, while the US President announced that the US intends to donate 500 million doses of the Covid vaccine to poorer countries in the next year. This was announced at the G7 meeting of world leaders earlier this year. Do the Government understand that the pandemic is not going to wait a year before taking more lives?

The question is: will the Government look to speed up how the vaccines are reaching lower-income countries, as the prediction is that access to the vaccines will not reach those countries until 2023, as my noble friend Lord Boateng said? The G7 countries do not need a surplus; they could make a decision that lower-income countries should receive the vaccines they need now. The Financial Times has talked about vaccines passing their sell-by dates in warehouses, so we know that there is sufficient to vaccinate the world.

Ghana was the first country to receive vaccines from COVAX in February this year. Since then, more than 81 million doses have been delivered to more than 120 countries around the world, including Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia and Fiji, but many African countries are still waiting for the vaccine to reach them.

COVAX is not without its critics; it is said that it is built on an unequal distribution structure. Countries which pay upfront have the option to buy vaccines for up to 50% of their own populations through COVAX. Lower-income countries, financed by advance market commitments, are able to buy for only 20% of their populations. It is morally wrong for rich countries such as the UK to have enough vaccine to vaccinate its population more than three times over, after it has vaccinated the lower age groups and given booster shots in the autumn.

Can COVAX help to end the pandemic that is spreading around the world? This is for not only our Government but world leaders to answer. Speaking on Radio 4 last Sunday morning, the former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, talked about ordering vaccines and storing doses that are not needed; in some cases, their date has expired. To keep all of us safe, it is important that COVAX has enough vaccine to distribute to all countries:

“No one is safe, unless everyone is safe”—


that is from the World Health Organization.