World’s poorest countries deprived of COVID-19 vaccines: media

SINGAPORE: Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna are making combined profits of 65,000 U.S. dollars every minute from their COVID-19 vaccines while the world’s poorest countries remain largely unvaccinated, local media cited AFP as reporting.

The companies have sold the vast majority of their doses to rich countries, leaving low-income nations in the lurch, said the People’s Vaccine Alliance (PVA), a coalition campaigning for wider access to COVID-19 vaccines, Singapore’s Chinese language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao reported.

The alliance estimates that the trio will make pre-tax profits of 34 billion dollars this year, which is equal to 65,000 dollars a minute.

“It is obscene that just a few companies are making millions of dollars in profit every single hour, while just 2 per cent of people in low-income countries have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus,” the report quoted Maaza Seyoum of the African Alliance and People’s Vaccine Alliance Africa as saying.

Pfizer and BioNTech have delivered less than 1 percent of their total supplies to low-income countries while Moderna has delivered just 0.2 percent, the PVA said.

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