World faces a 'moral test' over vaccine sharing, warns Greta Thunberg

The international community faces a "moral test" over the equitable global distribution of coronavirus vaccines, climate activist Greta Thunberg has warned.

Ms Thunberg, who is donating 100,000 euros (£86,000) to the Covax vaccine sharing initiative from her climate change foundation, said it was “completely unethical” that young and healthy people in richer countries were being vaccinated while more vulnerable people in poorer nations miss out.

Speaking at a World Health Organisation (WHO) press conference, the 18-year-old said: "The international community, governments and vaccine developers must step up their game and address the tragedy that is vaccine inequity.

"We have the tools we need to correct this great imbalance that exists around the world today in the fight against Covid-19.

"Just (as) with the climate crisis, those who are most vulnerable need to be prioritised and global problems require global solutions,” she said, adding that "vaccine nationalism is what's running the vaccine distribution".

Earlier this month Dr Matshidiso Moeti, director of the WHO African region, said the continent was playing “Covid-19 vaccination catch up”: out of the 690 million doses of vaccine administered globally, just 31.6m - less than two per cent - have been given in Africa.

Ms Thunberg, who gained worldwide prominence for skipping school in protest at inaction over climate change, ruled out a “vaccine strike” over this inequity.

“This is a problem that needs to be addressed by the international community - governments and the vaccine developers,” she said.

She added that everyone who is offered a jab should take one. “Urging individuals to not take the vaccine, that would send the very wrong message.”

But Ms Thunberg stressed that pandemics would become more frequent unless the world alters its relationship with nature.

"Today up to 75 per cent of all emerging diseases come from animals, and as we are cutting down forests and destroying habitats we are creating the ideal conditions for diseases to spillover from one animal to another and then to us.

"We can no longer separate the health crisis from the ecological crisis and we cannot separate the ecological crisis from the climate crisis. It's all interlinked in many ways."

Earlier in the press conference WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the number of cases globally rose for the eighth week in a row last week - with 5.2million cases reported, the biggest number ever recorded in a single week.

“Big numbers can make us numb. But each one of these cases is a tragedy for families, communities and nations,” he said.

He also warned that numbers were rising “at an alarming rate” in those aged 25 to 29 “possibly as a result of highly transmissible variants, and increased social mixing among younger adults”.

Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on Covid, said that young people should not be blamed for the surge.

“What we are seeing is a slight age shift in some countries, driven by social mixing. Social mixing doesn't necessarily mean going out and having a party, it means individuals who have to leave their home to go to work. It means individuals having to feed their families.

“And if you increase social mixing for a variety of reasons ... the virus will take advantage of that,” she said.

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