The president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, has called on wealthy countries to stop hoarding excess Covid-19 vaccines, as he said the world needed to act together to fight the pandemic.
Ramaphosa told a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum that he was concerned about “vaccine nationalism”.
“We need those who have hoarded the vaccines to release the vaccines so that other countries can have them,” Ramaphosa said in a special address on day two of the WEF’s annual meeting, which brings together politicians and wealthy tycoons.
He said: “The rich countries of the world went out, acquired large doses of vaccines from the developers and manufacturers of these vaccines and some countries have even gone beyond and acquired up to four times what their population needs. And that was aimed at hoarding these vaccines. And now this is being done to the exclusion of other countries in the world that most need this.”
Ramaphosa, who currently chairs the African Union, said African countries wanted access to vaccines as quickly as other nations.
South Africa’s Covid outbreak is the worst in Africa, with 1,417,537 cases confirmed since the start of the pandemic, and 41,117.