• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • TP について/About
  • Topics/トピクス
    • Gender/ジェンダー
    • Globalisation/グローバリゼーション
    • Japan and Asia/日本とアジア
    • Japanese/日本語
    • Media/メディア
    • News/ニュース
    • Social Justice/社会正義
    • War and Empire/戦争&支配権力
    • Environment/環境
    • Other Stories/他の記事
  • Links/リンク
  • Contact

TokyoProgressive

Linking Progressives East and West Since 1997

東西のプログレッシブをつなぐ − 1997年設立  |  Linking Progressives East and West Since 1997

Two Days After Pfizer's Hopeful Vaccine News, 82% of Doses Already Bought by World's Richest Nations

November 11, 2020 by Leave a Comment

 

From CommonDreams

Published on
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
by
Common Dreams

Two Days After Pfizer's Hopeful Vaccine News, 82% of Doses Already Bought by World's Richest Nations

“You couldn’t get a clearer example of how unequal the pharmaceutical system is—some make billions of pounds, while many others die because they cannot afford treatments or there are no more left for them to buy.”

by
Julia Conley, staff writer
0 Comments

Bottles of a trial Covid-19 vaccine on a table in a lab in Brussels on June 18, 2020. (Photo: Vincent Kalut/Photonews via Getty Images)

Campaigners in the United Kingdom on Wednesday warned that just two days after pharmaceutical giant Pfizer shared positive early results of its coronavirus vaccine trial, mass purchases of the vaccine by the world’s richest countries have left more than 85% of the global population—namely, the world’s poorest—without any way to access it. 

Pfizer says it can produce 1.35 billion doses of the vaccine, which was shown according to Pfizer’s first formal review to be 90% effective at preventing coronavirus infection in patients who have never had the virus, by the end of 2021. More than one billion of those doses—82% of the supply—have already been purchased by wealthy countries. 

Over 80% of #Pfizer‘s vaccine doses have already been bought by the richest governments (= only 14% of global population). This shows just how screwed the pharma system is, and how empty the promises of western leaders like Johnson. #PeoplesVaccine Now! https://t.co/BiHlvfASvg

— Nick Dearden (@nickdearden75) November 11, 2020

The U.S. has purchased 100 million doses with an option to buy 500 million, enough to potentially immunize its entire population against the coronavirus with hundreds of millions of doses left over. Since Monday Pfizer has also sold 40 million doses to the U.K. and 200 million doses to the E.U., with an option to buy 100 million more. 

“Unless we break the stranglehold of these massive corporations over our medicines, the injustice will continue.”
—Nick Dearden, Global Justice Now

In a statement, the British campaign group Global Justice Now noted that Pfizer’s partner in the development of the vaccine, German manufacturer BioNTech, has received financing of €375 million ($441 million) from the German government and €100 million ($117 million) from the European Investment Bank.

“Pfizer claims not to have had any state support, but the advance purchase of a billion doses of an unproven drug, not to mention the tax breaks and direct public funding of Pfizer’s partner suggests their claim is misleading at best,” said Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden. “Unless we break the stranglehold of these massive corporations over our medicines, the injustice will continue.”

SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT

Never Miss a Beat.

Get our best delivered to your inbox.

Global Justice Now noted that Pfizer is likely to give some doses to developing countries through the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility (COVAX). However, those doses are expected to make up a small fraction of those produced by Pfizer, leaving billions of people without access to the vaccine. 

COVAX has been undermined by the refusal of some wealthy countries, including the U.S., to take part in the global effort to ensure vaccine access, and now by mass purchases by some of those same countries. 

“You couldn’t get a clearer example of how unequal the pharmaceutical system is—some make billions of pounds, while many others die because they cannot afford treatments or there are no more left for them to buy,” Dearden said. “It’s got to change.”

Global Justice Now repeated its call from earlier this week for the suspension of global patent rules to make it possible for poor countries to develop generic versions of Pfizer’s vaccine. South Africa and India last month proposed that the World Trade Organization suspend the rules on intellectual property for vaccines and treatments related to Covid-19.

“It is imperative that we end the vaccine nationalism and that sufficient supply is made available to all, on a fair basis, as a matter of urgency,” said Dearden. “That can be helped by supporting governments like South Africa and India who are trying to suspend intellectual property rules at the WTO during this global emergency.”

Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

This is the world we live in. This is the world we cover.

Because of people like you, another world is possible. There are many battles to be won, but we will battle them together—all of us. Common Dreams is not your normal news site. We don’t survive on clicks. We don’t want advertising dollars. We want the world to be a better place. But we can’t do it alone. It doesn’t work that way. We need you. If you can help today—because every gift of every size matters—please do. Without Your Support We Simply Don’t Exist.

Please select a donation method:



Related Articles

With Covid-19 Cases Surging, Experts Urge US Public to Re-Double Efforts to Stop Spread—and Temper Expectations for Pfizer's Vaccine

'We Need a #PeoplesVaccine': After Hopeful Findings From Pfizer, Campaigners Demand Suspension of Patents

'A Great Loss for Palestine': Veteran Diplomat and PLO Leader Saeb Erekat Dies of Covid-19

UN Agencies Warn of Global Hunger and Displacement 'Surge' From Coronavirus Pandemic

More in:
World
,
Big Pharma, Public Health, Coronavirus, Inequality, Global Justice Now

Top Comments

(Click to see more comments or to join the conversation)

Filed Under: Common Dreams, Social Justice/社会正義

Join the Discussion

Comment on this article or respond to others' comments.

You can post below or send to the mailing list at discuss@list.tokyoprogressive.org.

a) Please sign you name at the bottom of your comment, so that we know who wrote it.

b) To prevent spam, comments need to be manually approved.

c) Comments which are insulting, racist, homophobic or submitted in bad faith will not be published.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Primary Sidebar

Search the site

Archives

Main Categories (old and most recent)

Alternative News Contributors/投稿者 creative Democracy Now Environment/環境 Featured Gender/ジェンダー Globalisation/グローバリゼーション Jacobin Japan/日本 Japan and Asia/日本とアジア Japanese/日本語 Japan Focus Japan News Korea/韓国 latest latest-j links Media/メディア Mp3 National Security Archive neoliberalism new News/ニュース Other Stories/他の記事 Social Justice/社会正義 Topics Uncategorized Video War and Empire/戦争&支配権力

Search deeper

Abe activities, protests, films, events Afghanistan alternative news Bush class issues and homelessness Environmental research fukushima gaza health care Henoko human rights Iraq Iraq, Afganistan and the War on Terror Iraq and Afghanistan, opposing the wars Israel Japan Korea labor issues Latin America Middle East military North Korea nuclear nuclear waste Obama Okinawa Okinawa Palestine peace protest protest and resistance racism/human rights radiation state crimes Syria Takae Tepco Trump U.S. War world news English ニュース/社会問題 人権 平和、憲法9条

Design and Hosting for Progressives

Donate/寄付

Please support our work. This includes costs involved in producing this news site as well as our free hosting service for activists, teachers and students. Donations/寄付 can be sent to us via PayPal or Donately. You can also click on the buttons below to make a one-time donation.




Work with us

TokyoProgressive
supports and participates in projects of like-minded people and groups directly (technical, editing, design) and not-so directly (financial or moral support). Likewise, we also welcome contributions by readers that are consistent with promoting social justice. If you have a project you would like help with, or if you would like to submit an article, link, or report on a protest activity, please contact us here.

Footer

All opinions are those of the original authors and may not reflect the views of TokyoProgressive. This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for by copyright law in several countries. The material on this site is distributed without profit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyleft 1997-present: tokyoprogressive dot org

TokyoProgressive supports and participates in projects of like-minded people and groups directly (technical, editing, design) and not-so directly (financial or moral support). Likewise, we also welcome contributions by readers that are consistent with promoting social justice. If you have a project you would like help with, or if you would like to submit an article, link, or report on a protest activity, please contact us here.

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in