Johnson seeks G7 world vaccination goal

Leaders call for increasing jab supply and revealing data to meet challenge

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed he will push for a global target to commit to vaccinating the world against COVID-19 by the end of next year when he meets the leaders of advanced economic nations at the G7 summit that starts on Friday, in England.

In a statement, Johnson said that he would ask his counterparts to "rise to the greatest challenge of the post-war era".

"Vaccinating the world by the end of next year would be the single greatest feat in medical history," Johnson said. "I'm calling on my fellow G7 leaders to join us to end this terrible pandemic and pledge we will never allow the devastation wreaked by coronavirus to happen again."

G7 economies, including the United States, Italy, France, Germany and Japan, have stated how many doses they will donate to the global vaccine-sharing program, COVAX, but Britain and Canada are yet to confirm their intended contribution.

The Reuters news agency reported that Britain has ordered more than 500 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine and says it will donate any surplus. The prime minister is expected to confirm the amount of vaccines the United Kingdom will donate to COVAX at the summit, according to the BBC.

More than 40 million people in the UK, which has a population of 67 million, have now had their first dose of a vaccine, according to the government. It says 27 million people have had two doses.

According to Our World In Data, nearly 900 million people globally have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and of these, 450 million have received two doses.

Johnson said global vaccine supplies must be increased by "stepping up the manufacture of vaccines" and "lowering barriers to the international distribution of those vaccines".

Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, former UK prime minister Tony Blair called for data to be presented to encourage people to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine, and for extra freedoms for those who have been vaccinated.

Europe's vaccine rollout was hindered partly by delays because of safety fears around the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Blair said: "If we were to publish the overall figures showing the numbers vaccinated with each, the numbers of those that still have COVID, the numbers of those still hospitalized, the numbers of those who have died, I think the impact will be dramatic, not just here in Britain, but round the world.

"One of the biggest problems in getting the world vaccinated is there is now a resistance to the AstraZeneca vaccine. That I think is completely unjustified on the data. And if we did publish the data in that way, I think you would see very clearly both one that vaccines are massively effective in reducing the disease. And two, that AstraZeneca and Pfizer are roughly similar."

Sky News noted a new report by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, which said "vaccine status matters" and that health passes can "allow citizens to prove their status in a secure, privacy-preserving way".

Former Labour Party leader Blair, who was prime minister from 1997 to 2007, said those vaccinated should get more freedom, such as for travel, and was clear that this would mean discriminating. He told the BBC: "Other than for medical reasons, people should be vaccinated."

The Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Sunday that the spread of the Delta variant in the UK makes the June 21 target date for easing restrictions in the country "more difficult". He told Sky News that the Delta variant of COVID-19 is 40 percent more transmissible than the Alpha strain.

Hancock said: "That figure is the latest advice that I have. That means that it is more difficult to manage this virus with the new Delta variant, but crucially we believe that with two doses of the vaccine you get the same protection as the old variant." He added that the UK health system is now ready to open up vaccines to all under-30s. He said the link between cases and hospitalizations has been "severed but not broken".

Britain's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, or MHRA, on Friday approved the use of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for 12 to 15-year-olds, but Hancock said experts would first be consulted "on the right approach to putting this into practice".