Vaccine contenders gobbled up by rich countries, Oxfam accuses

Wealthy nations representing just 13% of the world’s population have already cornered more than half of the promised doses of leading COVID-19 vaccine candidates, Oxfam warned on Thursday as the health and finance ministers of G20 countries meet to discuss the global pandemic.

The international agency analyzed the deals that pharmaceutical corporations and vaccine producers have already struck with nations around the world for the five leading vaccine candidates currently in Phase III trials, based on data collected by Airfinity.

"We will never be able to produce a vaccine at the scale required until corporations share their knowledge"Oxfam also warned that the same companies simply do not have the capacity to make enough vaccines for everyone who needs one. Even in the extremely unlikely event that all five vaccines succeed, nearly two-thirds of the world’s population will not have a vaccine until at least 2022. It is far more likely some of these experiments will fail, leaving the number of people without access even higher.