Canada will donate 10 million doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine to the COVAX vaccine sharing initiative and will also donate $ 15 million to help manufacture mRNA vaccines in Africa.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the donation in Rome this afternoon as he attended the G20 leaders’ summit.
Canada also intends to increase its financial support to COVAX to enable it to purchase an additional 63 million doses.
In total, between financial contributions and direct dose delivery, Canada says it will help deliver at least 200 million vaccines by the end of next year.
Vaccine equity is an important issue at the summit table, with warnings from the International Monetary Fund and the World Health Organization, among others, that inequitable vaccine distribution will delay the global economic recovery and will make it very uneven.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, host of this year’s summit, said in his opening remarks on Saturday that the inequitable delivery of vaccines is “surprising”.
On average, G20 countries have adequately immunized around 55% of their population. Canada has adequately immunized 74% of its entire population.
Globally, 38% of the population is adequately immunized. In Africa, it’s not even 6%.
“These differences are morally unacceptable and undermine the global recovery,” he said.
Canada has already pledged to donate 40 million excess doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Novavax vaccines, the latter still in development.