Amnesty International accuses rich countries and pharmaceutical companies of human rights violations in connection with vaccine procurement.
The fact that rich countries stockpile coronavirus vaccines while millions of people in poorer countries are urgently waiting for a chance to be vaccinated is unacceptable, Amnesty Secretary General Agnes Callamard said at a briefing of the journalists’ association ACANU in Geneva on Friday.
She criticized by name the pharmaceutical companies BioNTech, Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. She accused them of keeping vaccines in extra short supply for greed and profit in order to be able to achieve high prices.
Callamard called on the companies to give up patents and allow more companies to produce the vaccines. They should also give at least half of their production at cost to poorer countries. She demanded that governments immediately transfer their stocks to poorer countries.
According to data analysis company Airfinity, the shelf life of more than 100 million Covid-19 vaccine doses worldwide will expire at the end of the year.
If they are not urgently redistributed, the vaccine will go to waste.
More than 40 per cent of these vaccine doses are in the EU, the company reported earlier this week.
