Falmouth, June 11 (BNA): Leaders of the Group of Major Industrialized Nations (G7) are meeting on Friday for a summit that is overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic, the Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA) reported.

On the first day, leaders are discussing recovery from the pandemic, focusing on questions such as Covid-19 vaccine donations and financial aid to build vaccine production sites around the world.

The G7 group has pledged to donate 1 billion vaccine doses to poorer nations, by sharing jabs directly and through financial aid, the British government announced.

Leaders are also to come up with a plan to extend vaccine manufacturing.

Ahead of the summit, US President Joe Biden said the US would donate another 500 million vaccine doses to 92 poorer countries and the African Union by June next year.

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is hosting the three-day summit in the coastal village of Carbis Bay, announced that his country would provide 100 million surplus doses, most of them to be distributed through the COVAX vaccine-sharing programme.

COVAX co-chair Jane Halton told Times Radio she was “delighted and excited” about Johnson’s announcement.

“We’ve been calling to target the vulnerable around the world. So let’s assume we get to 1 billion by the end, that will be extraordinarily welcome.”

However, about 11 to 12 billion vaccine doses were necessary to immunize the entire global population, Halton warned, adding that so far only about 2.2 billion doses had been administered, about 77 per cent of which had gone to just 10 countries.

“And I don’t think you have to be very creative to figure out that those are the wealthiest in the world,” the COVAX chair said.

World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson Margaret Harris also praised the G7 pledge. It was “very heartening to see” that countries with access to large numbers of doses have now “responded to our call to please share doses,” she said.

The G7 group remains divided over the issue of lifting patent protection for coronavirus vaccines, as proposed by the US and several other nations.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that France and South Africa would present a proposal during the summit on an exemption for a limited period of time and applying to particular places.

The group is also looking to discuss plans to better prepare the world for future outbreaks. “Global solutions are needed,” according to a draft of a “Carbis Bay Health Declaration” seen by dpa.

In the draft, the G7 leaders commit “to strengthen our collective defences to better prevent, detect, and respond to, and recover from, future pandemics through effective multilateral action and a strengthened global health system.”

In the evening, the leaders are scheduled to attend a reception hosted by Queen Elizabeth II and her son, Prince Charles, during which environmental protection and fighting climate change are on the agenda.

A group of 457 global investors published a letter on Friday, calling on leaders worldwide to ramp up national plans to combat climate change to meet the goals set in the Paris climate agreement.

“In this shared global crisis, investors and governments each have a responsibility to act swiftly and boldly,” wrote the investors, representing a total of about 41 trillion dollars in assets.

“However, our ability to properly allocate the trillions of dollars needed to support the net-zero transition is limited by the ambition gap between current government commitments … and the emission reductions needed to limit global average temperature rise to 1.5-degrees Celsius,” the letter said.

It is the leaders’ first in-person meeting in this format in two years, after the G7 leaders only met virtually last year due to the pandemic.

It is the first major international summit for Biden, which he is attending as part of a one-week Europe trip.

The group is also discuss relationships with Russia and China, with Biden looking to strengthen ties with the other G7 members again to create a united counterweight to the two nations.

The G7 comprises the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Canada. On Saturday, the leaders of Australia, India, South Korea and South Africa are invited as guests as well.

Johnson has said he hopes this will make the summit more of a conference of leading democracies.

Source: Bahrain News Agency