London: Climate activist Greta Thunberg says it is “completely unethical” for wealthier countries to be vaccinating their younger populations against COVID-19 before the world’s vulnerable and frontline workers in poorer nations are offered a jab.
The Swedish teenager lent her star profile to the World Health Organisation on Monday (Tuesday AEST) to rail against vaccine inequity.
Overnight the United States opened its vaccine program to all adults, with President Joe Biden beating his May 1 deadline to offer the jab to anyone who wants one.
Separately, the European Union last month blocked the export of AstraZeneca doses to Australia, limiting the number of vaccines Canberra could subsequently send to its neighbour Papua New Guinea, which is suffering a severe coronavirus outbreak.
Thunberg said the pandemic had shown what science could achieve when it was well resourced, pointing to the record speed at which vaccines were developed . However, she said it was a “tragedy” that one in four people in high-income countries had been vaccinated compared to one in more than 500 in low and middle-income countries.
“It is completely unethical that high-income countries are now vaccinating young and healthy people if that happens at the expense of people in risk groups and on the front lines in lower and middle-income countries,” she said via Zoom.
“This is a moral test ... vaccine nationalism is what’s running the vaccine distribution.
“It is only when it really comes down to it that we show our true face.”
Thunberg has previously said she will likely skip this year’s global Conference of the Parties (COP) climate talks, to be held in Glasgow later this year, because she says it is unfair that representatives from poorer countries might not be vaccinated and eligible to travel in time for the talks.
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