David Oyelowo voices a coronavirus particle in a new animated series.
David Oyelowo
The 44-year-old star voices two characters in ‘Pandemica’, a series from the ONE Campaign – the global health and anti-poverty organisation co-founded by Bono – which aims to highlight the lack of coronavirus vaccines available to many of the world’s poorest countries.
In one of the show’s episodes, David plays a COVID-19 particle leading an army that attacks a group of people enjoying spending time outdoors, while in another, he’s one of three mountaineers given a package containing just two vaccines.
He told People magazine of the series: "They're really great, very short clips that hopefully continue to spread awareness about how careful we need to be with this virus and how much we need to embrace the vaccine.”
The seven episodes also features the voices of the U2 frontman, Patrick Adams, Michael Sheen, Penelope Cruz, Nick Kroll, Wanda Sykes and Kumail Nanjiani.
The ONE Campaign are inviting people to sign a petition to support their efforts and have shared an open letter to President Joe Biden encouraging him to allow the country to share surplus vaccines with disadvantaged countries.
They noted “less than 1% of doses administered globally have gone to people in low-income countries, while a handful of wealthy countries have enough vaccines to inoculate their entire populations and still have more than 1 billion doses left over.”
David also hopes ‘Pandemica’ will help ease people’s doubts over taking the vaccine.
He said: "I've had my skepticism as well. I've had my questions. I made the choice to approach high-level health care professionals with my questions, and a lot of my skepticism and fear has been allayed by science, by the expertise, by the research and by the results.
"And I know, particularly in Black and brown communities, where we've had very, very challenging histories around how we've been treated, from a healthcare point of view, there's a high level of distrust. And so, understandably, there's a lot of skepticism in and amongst those communities."
The ’Selma’ star stressed how important it is for as many people as possible to be vaccinated.
He added: "This is something that affects everyone.
"I understand people who may be shy of talking about it, because they may have their own questions as well.
"But this has affected all of humanity. I consider it a duty to do my part."
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