Shared international system coronavirus Vaccines should ensure that low-income and middle-income countries have access to vaccines without being ranked last and not affected by unreliable donations.
It is not resolved in this way.Only in late June, this item was called Kovacs Approximately 530,000 doses of vaccine were sent to the UK-more than twice the number sent to the entire African continent that month.
Canada will donate 10 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine to poorer countries
Under COVAX, countries should provide funds so that vaccines can be put on hold, either as donations to poor countries or as insurance policies for rich countries to purchase vaccines when the vaccines expire. Some rich countries, including the European Union, calculated that the doses they received through bilateral transactions were more than enough, and transferred their assigned COVAX doses to poorer countries.
But other countries, including the United Kingdom, although they are one of the countries that retain most of the available vaccines in the world, they themselves have taken advantage of the meager supply of COVAX doses. At the same time, billions of people in poor countries have not yet received a dose of the vaccine.
As a result, poorer countries are caught in a dilemma that COVAX should avoid: relying on the whim and politics of rich countries to donate, as has often happened in the past. In many cases, rich countries do not want to make large donations before vaccinating all citizens who may need to be vaccinated, and this process is still ongoing.
“If we try to prevent vaccination in parts of the world, will we be worse than we are now?” asked Dr. Bruce Aylward, a senior adviser to the World Health Organization, at a public meeting on vaccine fairness.
Other wealthy countries that have recently received paid vaccines through COVAX include Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, all of which have relatively high immunization rates and other ways to obtain vaccines. Qatar has pledged to donate 1.4 million doses of vaccine and has shipped more than 74,000 doses from COVAX.
Although Canada, Australia and New Zealand did it, the United States has never received any doses through COVAX. Canada has received so much criticism for accepting COVAX goods that it stated that it would not request additional goods.
At the same time, Venezuela has not received any doses from COVAX. Haiti received less than half of its allocation, and Syria received about one-tenth. Officials said that in some cases, doses were not sent because countries had no plans to distribute them.
British officials confirmed that the UK received approximately 539,000 doses of vaccine in late June and has the option to purchase another 27 million doses through COVAX.
“The government is a staunch supporter of COVAX,” the UK said, describing the initiative as a mechanism for all countries to obtain vaccines, not just countries that need donations. Although the private transaction reserved eight injections for each British resident, it declined to explain why it chose to receive these doses.
Brooke Baker, a professor of law at Northeastern University who specializes in drug acquisition, said that it is unreasonable for rich countries to get involved in COVAX vaccine supply when more than 90 developing countries are almost unable to obtain COVAX vaccine. The Serum Institute of India, the largest supplier of COVAX, stopped sharing vaccines in April in response to a surge in cases in the subcontinent.
Although wealthy countries such as the United Kingdom purchase relatively few vaccines through COVAX, the extremely limited global supply means that these purchases have led to a reduction in the number of vaccines vaccinated in poor countries. So far, the dose provided by the plan is less than 10% of its commitment.
COVAX is operated by the World Health Organization, the Vaccine Alliance Gavi, and the Epidemic Prevention Innovation Alliance, which was established in 2017 to develop vaccines to prevent outbreaks. Baker said the plan is now trying to regain its credibility by allowing rich countries to distribute their donated vaccines through their own systems. But even this effort is not completely successful, because some countries are formulating their own deals to gain favorable propaganda and political influence.
“Rich countries are trying to obtain geopolitical benefits from bilateral dose sharing,” Baker noted.
The Associated Press’s statistics on the vaccines promised and delivered found that, with the exception of China, donations accounted for only a small part of the promise so far.
Dr. Christian Happi, an infectious disease expert at the Saviour University of Nigeria, said that donations from rich countries are insufficient and unreliable, especially because they not only take up most of the world’s supplies, but also start to vaccinate children and consider booster injections.
Happi called on Africa, where 1.5% of the population has been fully vaccinated to increase its own vaccine production instead of relying on COVAX.
“We can’t wait for them to come up with a solution,” he said.
COVAX is very aware of this problem. At the last board meeting at the end of June, health officials admitted that they had failed to achieve a fair distribution. But they still decided not to prevent donor countries from purchasing supplies themselves.
In a subsequent meeting with partners, Gavi CEO Dr. Seth Berkley stated that COVAX intends to fulfill the agreements reached with rich countries, but will require them to “adjust” the allocated dose in the future to reduce vaccine demand, according to a meeting Participants said who spoke of confidential calls on condition of anonymity.
One of the reasons that Berkeley cited Gavi’s reluctance to sign or renegotiate contracts with rich countries is the potential risk of its balance sheet. Last year, the UK alone donated more than US$860 million to COVAX.
The minutes of the June meeting showed that Gavi modified COVAX’s initial plan to distribute vaccines equally between rich and poor countries, and proposed that poor countries will receive approximately 75% of the COVID-19 dose in the future. Without the participation of rich countries in COVAX, Gavi stated that “it will be difficult to reach deals with certain manufacturers.”
In response to a request for comment from the Associated Press, Gavi stated that the plan’s goal is to provide more than 2 billion doses by early 2022 and described COVAX as an “unprecedented global effort.”
“The vast majority of COVAX supply will go to low- and middle-income countries,” Gavi said in an email regarding its latest supply forecast. It said that for many countries, “COVAX is the main, if not the only source of COVID-19 vaccine supply.”
Spain’s donation to four countries in Latin America-this is the first donation through COVAX-reflects that even wealthy countries with large amounts of vaccines have minimal donations. Spain has injected 57 million doses of vaccines into its residents and shipped 654,000 doses in the first week of August. Spain’s final 22.5 million doses of vaccines promised to COVAX will be 3%.
Gavi said that COVAX now has enough money and promises that donations will one day cover 30% of the population of the world’s poorest countries. But it has made great promises before.
In January of this year, COVAX stated that it had “secured the quantity” for delivery by July 2021, totaling 640 million doses, all of which were based on signed agreements, not donations. But by last month, COVAX had shipped only 210 million doses, 40% of which were donated.
With COVAX being shelved, vaccine donation has become a political race. China has exported 770 million doses and announced its goal last week to export 2 billion doses to the rest of the world by the end of the year-exactly the same as COVAX’s original plan.
According to the Associated Press’s dose statistics, this is far ahead of the rest of the world. The UK delivered only 4.7 million units, which was far below the promised 30 million units. The EU provided 7.1 million units and 55 million units through the COVAX contract.
“If donors don’t come forward, those who continue to die are ours,” said Strive Masiyiwa, the African Union’s special envoy for COVID-19 vaccine procurement.
So far, the United States has delivered 111 million doses of vaccine, less than half of the promised. Several U.S. lawmakers from both parties argued on Wednesday that the government should seize diplomatic opportunities and more actively seek credibility for its overseas doses.
“I think we should provide vaccines throughout the Middle East, but I also think we should put an American flag on every vial,” said Democratic Representative Juan Vargas from California on the issue. Said at the hearing on the pandemic situation in the region. middle East.
Even Josep Borrell, the head of EU foreign policy, recently condemned the lag in European geopolitical donations as a loss to China. When US President Joe Biden announced that the US donations were finally in place, he also described these doses as a way to counter “Russia and China’s use of vaccines to influence the world.” The White House stated that the United States has donated more than 110 million doses of vaccines, some of which have been donated through COVAX.
In addition to the planned export of vaccines, China also announced plans to donate US$100 million to COVAX to purchase more doses for developing countries.
“The key to strengthening vaccine cooperation and building the Great Wall of Immunization is to ensure fair access,” said Wang Xiaolong, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after holding an online forum on equitable vaccine distribution in China on Friday.
The COVAX Board of Directors has agreed to restore its basic assumptions about vaccination worldwide by the end of this year. At the top of its list: “The latest definition of fair and equitable access.”
— Hinnant reports from Paris. Ken Moritsugu in Beijing; Wu Huizhong in Taipei; Karaana in Nairobi; Jon Gambler in Dubai; and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed.
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