Queen Rania of Jordan has stated that there is no reason why countries that have an excessive supply of vaccines can't donate their surplus to poorer states, as she called for fair distribution.
“We are all in a race against a pandemic, not against each other,” Queen Rania said, adding that any single country's inability to recover from this crisis could lead to instability and insecurity for all.
Her statements were made while participating virtually in the Warwick Economics Summit.
The Queen explained that while some wealthy countries have pre-ordered enough vaccine doses to immunize their populations three times over, "lower-income countries will at best only manage to vaccinate a tenth of their populations" this year.
“I see no reason why those who have excess supply can't donate their surplus to poorer countries, and I'm glad that some countries have committed to doing just that,” the Queen said.
"If we aren't motivated by moral or ethical responsibility, then at least we should be motivated to act from a global health standpoint," she added.
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has expressed concern that more than three-quarters of vaccinations are in just 10 countries.
"Almost 130 countries, with 2.5 billion people, have yet to receive a single dose," he said.
Jordan’s Ministry of Health said that the death toll from the COVID-19 disease has reached 4,369 and the total number of infections rose to 333,855.
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 2,299,637 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP.
In addition, more than 120 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were used in no less than 82 countries.
