The UK begins donating COVID-19 vaccines around the world

The UK begins delivering nine million COVID-19 vaccines around the world, first to Indonesia, Jamaica and Kenya, to help tackle the pandemic.

Five million doses are being offered to COVAX. The vaccines will be urgently distributed to lower-income countries via an equitable allocation system, which prioritises delivering vaccines to people who most need them. Another 4 million doses will be shared directly with countries in need.

“We’re doing this because we know we won’t be safe until everyone is safe,” said Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.

The UK is donating the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, made by Oxford Biomedica in Oxford and packaged in Wrexham, North Wales.

Indonesia will receive 600,000 doses, 300,000 will be sent to Jamaica and 817,000 are to be transported to Kenya, among other countries.

This week’s deployment will help meet the urgent need for vaccines from countries around the world, including in Africa, South East Asia and the Caribbean. These regions are experiencing high levels of COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations and deaths.

This is the first tranche of the 100 million vaccines the Prime Minister pledged the UK would share within the next year at last month’s G7 in Cornwall.

At the G7 Summit last month, world leaders pledged to mobilise 1 billion vaccine doses to vaccinate the world and end the pandemic in 2022.

The UK has been at the forefront of the global response to the pandemic, including through investing £90 million to support the development of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

COVID-19 has ripped through the global economy, with infections reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019. More than 4.3 million people have died.