Ramaphosa Says Biden Will Be Channelling Pfizer Vaccine Donations to SA
- The G7 summit attended by President Cyril Ramaphosa was headlined by talks focused around Covid-19 vaccines
- There was also a pledge by US president Joe Biden to provide a portion of 500 million Pfizer doses
- Aspen Pharmacare has started work and development on new batches of vaccines following two million doses being unfortunately destroyed
- Discussions between Joe Biden and Cyril Ramaphosa were focused on their current relationship as well as the increasingly urgent need to expand the Covid-19 vaccine supply
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The G7 summit joined by President Cyril Ramaphosa saw Covid-19 vaccines being the prime focus of the talks. Ramaphosa stated on Sunday that what US President Joe Biden pledged to supply dominated discussions at the G7 summit, with President Cyril Ramaphosa saying on Sunday to provide South Africa with a portion of the 500 million Pfizer doses the US is distributing globally.
This follows Ramaphosa also confirming that Aspen Pharmacare is starting to develop new batches of the vaccine as two million doses were rejected and will be destroyed. This is on account of suspicions that a core component of the vaccine was contaminated in a US factory.
The White House announced in a statement on Sunday that Biden and Ramaphosa met on the margins of the summit to speak on their back and forth relationship and the urgent and important need to further the Covid-19 vaccine supply and to co-operate on climate goals in Africa.
Source: Getty Images
More info on the summit
According to reports by News24, the summit also saw discussions on climate change with Ramaphosa emphasising that Africa contributed the lowest amount of greenhouse gas emissions whilst being impacted the most by climate change as evidenced by droughts, floods and other phenomena.
Economical recovery
Covid-19 economic recovery assistance for countries through the International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Rights also took hold of a large portion of the discussions.
According to TodayNewsAfrica, whether Ramaphosa and Biden spoke about the highly scrutinised humanitarian situation in Tigray was vague.
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Previously, Briefly News recently reported that President Ramaphosa met with leaders of the G7 and reminded them of their commitments to provide financial support to countries to help fight Covid-19.
Rich countries can afford to help fund the development of tools to fight the virus. If the rich countries honoured their promises, the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator will have two-thirds of its funding. Ramaphosa said that if the G20 paid their share then 90% of ACT's funding would be secure.
Vaccine intellectual property rights
The South African president is also fighting to have the Covid-19 vaccine intellectual property rights temporarily waived according to eNCA.
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Source: Briefly News
