French President Emmanuel Macron has said Europe and the US should urgently allocate up to 5 per cent of their current vaccine supplies to developing countries where Covid-19 vaccination campaigns have scarcely begun and China and Russia are offering to fill the gap. 

In a Financial Times interview by video link from the Elysée Palace, Macron said African nations were sometimes buying western vaccines such as those made by AstraZeneca at “astronomical prices” — two or three times the price paid by the EU — and being offered Chinese and Russian vaccines of uncertain efficacy against new variants of the virus. 

“We are allowing the idea to take hold that hundreds of millions of vaccines are being given in rich countries and that we are not starting in poor countries,” he said ahead of a G7 meeting by video link on Friday of the leaders of the world’s biggest economies called by UK prime minister Boris Johnson.