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Indonesia pushes G7 to narrow vaccination gap
Indonesia's top diplomat insists that members of the Group of Seven still need to tackle the root issues causing a widening COVID-19 vaccination gap.
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United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken (left) and Japan's Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi (right) hold a bilateral meeting on the margins of the Group of Seven ministerial meeting in Liverpool, north-west England, on Dec. 11. The two-day gathering of foreign and development ministers from the group of wealthy countries comes amid rising global tensions. (AFP/Olivier Douliery)
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ndonesia told members of the Group of Seven at a meeting with ASEAN during the weekend to narrow the gap between vaccinations in developing and developed nations by ensuring equal access to vaccines and bolstering supply chains.
COVID-19 vaccinations in Southeast Asia, one of the world’s fastest-growing regions, have picked up in the second half of this year, shielding emerging economies like Indonesia from the devastations of a pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 5 million people worldwide.
But the gap between the Global South and the North on vaccinations continues to widen, potentially setting back collective efforts to hasten the global economic recovery.
According to one estimate, some 80 percent of the 8.2 billion vaccine doses administered worldwide have been given in the Group of 20 countries, of which the G7 is a subset, while just 0.4 percent of vaccine doses have been administered in low-income countries.
Among G7 members, Japan, the United States and Canada, as well as the United Kingdom, are ASEAN dialogue partners, while France, Germany and Italy are development partners to the bloc.
As developed economies, G7 members have significant advantages in recovering from the pandemic, especially with their edge in vaccine production and distribution capacity. Canada currently leads the group in vaccinating its people, with 77 percent of its population already fully vaccinated, while the US finds itself last in the group, with just about 60 percent of full vaccine coverage.
G7 countries have also helped bankroll the COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC) initiative, which aims to deliver vaccine doses globally in a fair and equitable manner. This year, total fundraising for COVAX reached US$10.9 billion.
