Trudeau hopes to add more doses to Canada’s vaccine donations at the G20 today

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OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to announce additional vaccine donations for developing countries today at the G20 meeting in Rome.

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COVID-19 and climate change will dominate most discussions, with economic recovery and health at the top of the agenda.

Canada has already pledged to donate 40 million excess doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Novavax vaccines, the last of which is still in development.

Trudeau is reaching the G20 by pressuring rich countries to donate more, but to date Canada has distributed 3.4 million of its promised doses, all of them AstraZeneca.

Globally, 1.3 billion doses were promised to COVAX from rich countries, but only 150 million have been delivered.

Today’s announcement is expected to affect several million doses of the Moderna vaccine that Canada purchased but has not yet received.

The Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, on Friday called on G20 leaders to immediately donate another 550 million doses so that 40% of the world’s population can be vaccinated before the end of the year. .

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“The promises do not translate into vaccines reaching the people who need them,” he said in an open letter that was also signed by Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

“We can’t just wait for the pandemic to end on its own,” they said, reminding people that as the virus continues to spread, the risk of new, riskier variants increases.

The International Monetary Fund said on Friday that global economic recovery depends on speeding up vaccinations. On average, the G20 nations have fully vaccinated about 55 percent of their population. Canada has fully vaccinated 74% of its entire population.

Worldwide, 38% of the population is fully vaccinated. In Africa, it is not even six percent.

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The supply chain crisis that is wreaking havoc across much of the world will also be high on the agenda, particularly for US President Joe Biden, who is attending his first G20 as president.

There is also a desire for G20 leaders to agree on stronger language to fight climate change ahead of the COP26 climate talks that begin in Scotland on Monday.

A strong statement from the leaders of the world’s largest economies, which are collectively responsible for 80 percent of economic output and 80 percent of global emissions, would send a clear message when the rest of the world joins them in Glasgow next week.

Talks leading up to the G20 included negotiations to more rapidly scale back new coal-fired power plants both at home and abroad, and increase financial assistance to help developing countries adapt to and mitigate climate change.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose agreement with the coal language is critical because China is a massive player in the global coal industry, will not travel to Rome for the G20.