Amnesty International: Pfizer Giving Poor Countries ‘Misleading’ Vaccine Info

Amnesty International accused Pfizer, a U.S.-based multinational pharmaceutical giant, on Thursday of using “misleading language” to suggest it has supplied poor countries with greater supplies of coronavirus vaccines than it actually has.

Citing a November 1 Twitter statement by Pfizer Biopharmaceuticals Group President Angela Hwang, Amnesty noted the company “agreed to supply 1.1 billion doses to low- and middle-income countries this year,” referring to doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine.

“This claim gives the impression that lower-income countries are receiving a substantial proportion of Pfizer vaccines, but the language is misleading,” Amnesty claimed.

The human rights organization said Pfizer categorized the economies of recipient countries in a way that differed from an established system used by the World Bank.

“The World Bank classifies economies for analytical purposes into four income groups: low, lower-middle, upper-middle, and high income,” Amnesty noted.

“Pfizer has amalgamated low, lower-middle, and upper-middle countries – over 84 percent of the global population – into one group and referred to them as ‘low and middle-income,'” Amnesty observed. “Within this very broad category, the bulk of Pfizer’s doses have in fact been going to ‘upper-middle’ income countries such as Malaysia, Mexico, and Thailand.”

After parsing Pfizer’s categorization of international economies, Amnesty claimed “Pfizer said it had shipped a total of two billion doses by the end of September.” The organization did not specify which countries were allegedly promised the “two billion doses,” presumably of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, nor did it classify their economies.

Amnesty cited a “Pfizer Quarterly Corporate Performance – Third Quarter 2021” report to support its claim that “Pfizer said it had shipped a total of two billion doses by the end of September.” An accompanying URL provided by Amnesty as a citation for the report produced a “Page not found” message for Breitbart News at press time.

Pfizer on May 21 pledged to provide 2 billion doses of its coronavirus vaccine to “middle- and low-income countries” not by the end of September but “over next 18 months.”

Pfizer sent a letter to Amnesty on November 8 addressing its “distribution of doses to low-income countries,” according to the human rights group.

“It is simply not accurate to say that no doses at all have reached these countries as of today,” Pfizer’s statement read.

“We recognize and are concerned by the relative lower pace with which vaccines ended up reaching low-income countries, however, it is important to also acknowledge that approximately two-thirds of the 1.3 billion people living in poverty are in the middle-income countries,” the letter continued.

“Lower-middle-income and upper-middle-income countries are currently home to 75 percent of the world’s population and 62 percent of the world’s poor,” Pfizer noted.

“Nonetheless, we anticipate that there will be a substantial increase in dose shipments through the end of the year with a particular focus on low- and lower-middle-income countries that are further from global targets,” the letter concluded.