Vaccines: PM pledges to give leftover supplies to poorer countries

Boris Johnson will promise to give the United Kingdom's leftover vaccines to poorer countries.

The UK has ordered over 400 million doses of vaccine so there will be lots left over once all adults have had their jabs.

In a video conference with other world leaders, the Prime Minister will also urge rich countries to back a new 100-day target for the development of new vaccines for future emerging diseases.

However, some anti-poverty campaign groups have said that the UK still isn't doing enough to help poorer countries.

What is the situation?

The UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (pictured) will lead a meeting of some of the biggest world leaders

Boris Johnson is hosting a meeting of some of the biggest world leaders called the G7.

In this meeting, he's expected to say that the UK intends to give over half of it's leftover vaccines to an organisation called Covax,

Covax has been set up by the United Nations to ensure that there's equal access to coronavirus vaccines in countries that otherwise might not be able to afford them.

So far, the UK government has donated £548 million to Covax.

The United States has donated over $4 billion to the project.

Why does the UK have left over jabs?

The UK has put in orders for over 400 million doses of vaccine

When the coronavirus pandemic became a big problem in the UK, the government put in millions of orders with some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world.

The hope was that these companies would be able to produce a vaccine to protect people from the virus.

However, the companies have produced the vaccines at different speeds and this means that there are going to be lots left over when all the orders are complete.

In total, the government bought over 400 million doses of vaccine.

There are 68 million people in the UK. And, currently vaccines are only being given to adults.

So, even if every adult has two doses of a vaccine, there's going to be a lot left over.

What are the criticisms?

There are still 130 countries in the world with no vaccinations so far

New figures from the anti-poverty group, the ONE campaign, show that Australia, Canada, Japan, the UK, the US and the EU have already bought more than three billion doses of vaccine.

That's 1.2 billion more than they need to give their entire populations two doses.

The ONE campaign group aims to end extreme poverty and preventable disease by 2030.

130 countries in the world haven't done any vaccinations at all and healthcare workers in those countries remain at high risk.

Even if the Covax plan works, it's only designed to cover 20% of each nation's population.

This is far less than what's expected in richer countries, like the UK.