India among 5 WTO Member nations to produce 75 pc of Global Covid vaccines

World Trade Organisation Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has said that five member states of WTO alone will account for three-quarters of the entire global output of COVID-19 vaccines this year. She said, production remains highly centralised as about 75 per cent of this year's vaccines appear set to come from five WTO members - India, Germany, US, France and China. The WTO Director-General was addressing a high-level dialogue on "Expanding COVID-19 vaccine manufacture to promote equitable access"  on Wednesday. Okonjo-Iweala said discriminatory access to vaccines is a root cause of the unequal recovery of the global economy, in which developed economies are rebounding quickly while the rest are lagging behind. She said, the lack of full transparency in vaccine supply deals is another reason for concern.
WTO DG said, 1.1 billion COVID vaccine doses were administered worldwide in June this year. Of these, only 1.4 per cent went to Africans, who account for 17 per cent of the global population. Only 0.24 per cent went to people in low-income countries. And both shares declined even further in the first half of July," she said. In Africa, only 20 million people, or 1.5 per cent of the population, are fully vaccinated, compared to 42 per cent of people in developed countries. We cannot accept this, for moral, practical, and economic reasons.