Poor countries need billions in aid to avert Covid catastrophe, experts warn World leaders have been warned that unless they act with extreme urgency, the Covid-19 pandemic will overwhelm health services in many nations in South America, Asia, and Africa over the next few weeks. Only billions of pounds of aid and massive exports of vaccines can halt a humanitarian catastrophe that is now unfolding rapidly across the planet, scientists and world health experts said. They fear that the terrible scenes now unfolding in India – where people are dying in hospital corridors, on roads and in their homes, while car parks are being turned into cremation grounds – could be repeated in many other economically fragile nations. Their fates now contrast sharply with those of well vaccinated countries such as the UK and the US where lockdowns are being lifted.