Rich countries have secured enough coronavirus vaccines to protect their populations nearly three times over by the end of 2021, Amnesty International and other groups said on Wednesday, possibly depriving billions of people in poorer areas.

Britain approved Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine this month, raising hopes that the tide could soon turn against a virus that has killed nearly 1.5 million globally, hammered the world economy and upended normal life.

Amnesty and other organisations including Frontline AIDS, Global Justice Now and Oxfam, urged governments and the pharmaceutical industry to take action to ensure intellectual property of vaccines is shared widely.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has also called on governments repeatedly this year to make a vaccine protecting against COVID-19 a “public good”.

The WHO has backed a global vaccine programme scheme known as COVAX, which seeks to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines and 189 countries have joined. But some countries such as the United States have not signed up, having secured bilateral deals.

COVAX hopes to deliver some 2 billion doses by the end of 2021 but that would still only represent about 20% of the populations of countries that are part of the mechanism.

“Nearly 70 poor countries will only be able to vaccinate one in ten people against COVID-19 next year unless urgent action is taken,” Amnesty International said, based on recent calculations. “Updated data shows that rich nations representing just 14% of the world’s population have bought up 53% of all the most promising vaccines so far,” it said. S.Africa now experiencing COVID-19 ‘second wave’

South Africa, the country most affected by the coronavirus on the continent, has entered a second wave of the pandemic, the health minister has declared.

“As it stands as a country we now meet that criteria,” said Zweli Mkhize in a statement as the country registered nearly 7,000 new cases in the last 24-hour cycle. The country now counts 828,598 infections after 6,709 new cases were detected between Tuesday and Wednesday. South Africa had reined in its first wave which occurred in July at an average of 12,000 cases detected daily. Numbers then gradually came down, at a point dropping below 1,000 in September. The minister said the number of new infections detected in parts of the country suggest that “we should expect faster rising numbers with a higher peak than in the first wave”.