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Two-thirds of countries are yet to meet the target of vaccinating 70 percent of people in all countries against COVID-19 set a year ago at the UN General Assembly, according to figures published today by Oxfam and The People’s Vaccine Alliance.

Without urgent action to relieve developing countries of all their external debt payments this year, and ensure they don't accrue into the future, the coronavirus could lead to millions of deaths and force half a billion more people around the world into poverty, said Oxfam today in response to the G7's joint statement on debt moratorium for poor countries.

In response to the announcement that AstraZeneca is to move away from the non-profit model for COVID vaccines, Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager and spokesperson for the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said: “AstraZeneca is breaking its repeated and celebrated public promises of a non-profit vaccine for all countries for the duration of this pandemic and to never to make a profit in any low- and middle-income country from this publicly funded vaccine."  

The world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes from $405 billion to $869 billion since 2020 —at a rate of $14 million per hour— while nearly five billion people have been made poorer, reveals a new Oxfam report on inequality and global corporate power. If current trends continue, the world will have its first trillionaire within a decade but poverty won’t be eradicated for another 229 years.

Over a quarter of a billion more people could crash into extreme levels of poverty in 2022 because of COVID-19, rising global inequality and the shock of food price rises supercharged by the war in Ukraine, reveals a new Oxfam brief today. 

Responding to the WTO’s published ‘outcome’ of negotiations over a waiver of Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS), Max Lawson, Head of Inequality Policy for Oxfam and co-chair of the People's Vaccine Alliance, said: "This text is a recognition that WTO rules on intellectual property are a clear barrier to ensuring people get the vaccines, tests, and treatments they need. It is a tragedy that it has taken almost two years and millions of deaths to reach this point and a travesty that the action proposed today falls well short of what is needed."

New Oxfam research shows that over a third of the world’s population has had no public money to cope with the effects of the pandemic. A new report “Shelter from the Storm” reviewed government programs used to inject additional money to help people and found none of them were adequate to meet everyone’s needs.

In response to Jeff Bezos’ space flight scheduled for Tuesday, Deepak Xavier, Oxfam International's Global Head of Inequality Campaign, said: "We’ve now reached stratospheric inequality. Billionaires burning into space, away from a world of pandemic, climate change and starvation. 11 people are likely now dying of hunger each minute while Bezos prepares for an 11-minute personal space flight. This is human folly, not human achievement."

Up to a quarter of a billion people are at risk of falling into extreme poverty this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, climate crisis and the crisis in Ukraine. Global inequality threatens to rise massively unless more is done to effectively address this situation.  

The G7 must pursue windfall taxes on excess corporate profits including from those making huge returns from surging food and energy prices. The revenues can be used to fund an end to global hunger and to tackle climate change, says Oxfam.