Covid-19: Vaccination in Developing Countries

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to support COVID-19 vaccination programmes in developing countries following the emergence of the Omicron variant.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, the new variant omicron is showing us yet again that no one is safe until everyone is safe. Global vaccination continues to be vital for our defences against the pandemic and we are committed to making sure that people in the poorest countries get vaccines. We are a leading supporter of COVAX, which has delivered over 483 million vaccines to low and middle-income countries. This will rise to 1.8 billion doses by mid-2022.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

I thank the Minister for his reply. I am slightly confused because I am hearing very different stats coming out. Affinity said yesterday that we have in fact delivered to developing countries only 11% of the vaccines we have promised, so I wonder when the remaining 89% might be delivered. Is the Minister aware that the Anglican Communion is working hard with local leaders in grass-roots churches right across Africa and parts of Asia on overcoming vaccine hesitation? Would he and his colleagues be willing to meet some of our team to see how we can roll these programmes out faster?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for his question. I do not recognise those particular stats, but I can give him some others which perhaps may reassure him. As I said earlier, the UK is one of the largest donors to the COVAX advance market commitment, which supports access to Covid-19 vaccines for up to 92 low and middle-income countries, 46 of which are in Africa. Our commitment of £548 million will support the COVAX AMC to deliver up to 1.8 billion doses to those countries in early 2022. We have already delivered 16 million doses through COVAX and directly to recipient countries, of which over 6 million have been delivered to 14 countries in Africa. Some 5.8 million doses are with COVAX and are in the process of being allocated and delivered and a further 9 million will be delivered to COVAX in the coming weeks, direct from AstraZeneca. Countries receiving those doses include Kenya, Nigeria and Mozambique.

I apologise for my long answer but, as the right reverend Prelate mentioned, many factors contribute to the slow vaccine rollout and one of those is vaccine hesitancy. I pay tribute to the Church for the extensive work it does on both Covid and other diseases, in particular in Africa, and of course we would be more than happy to meet and talk about this.