Rich countries are facing increasing pressure to shift Covid vaccine supplies to low-income areas, and a new analysis shows that they may have approximately 1.2 billion additional doses of vaccine available by the end of this year.
The United States, the United Kingdom, European countries, and other countries can meet their own needs-vaccinate approximately 80% of the population over 12 years of age and promote enhanced programs-and there are still a large number of vaccines that need to be redistributed globally, according to the London-based The report said. Analysis company Airfinity.
So far, these governments have pledged very little supply to poorer countries, because some governments have promoted booster shooting plans in competitions with the Delta variants. Health advocates worry that the slow pace will extend the duration of the pandemic and increase the risk of more worrying mutations. Some also called for greater transparency in agreements between the government and manufacturers.
“There is an urgent need for global liquidation,” said Fatima Hassan, founder and director of the Cape Town non-profit organization Health Justice Initiative. “We need to divert the dose to those in need and open all contracts.”
‘Wrong dichotomy’
An independent review of the international Covid response earlier this year urged high-income countries to provide more than 2 billion doses of vaccine to poorer areas by mid-2022. Airfinity found that less than 15% of the more than 1 billion doses of vaccines promised by the Group of Seven and the European Union have been delivered.
The company’s chief executive, Rasmus Bech Hansen, said in an interview that the issue is often seen as a choice between strengthening activities at home or redistributing doses abroad.
“Our data shows that this is a false dichotomy,” he said. “You can have both.” He said that global output is steadily rising, and disruption seems unlikely. Airfinity estimates that by the end of this year, production may exceed 12 billion doses, including injections in China. This is more than the approximately 11 billion people needed to be vaccinated globally.
Analysis shows that there are approximately 500 million doses available for redistribution in Western countries today, some of which have already been donated, and this number will increase to approximately 2.2 billion doses by mid-2022. According to Airfinity data, Pfizer and BioNTech SE vaccines account for approximately 45% of the available vaccines that can be redistributed, while Moderna’s vaccines account for approximately a quarter of the total.
Many low-income countries rely on Covax, an initiative led by groups including the World Health Organization to provide every country with fair injection opportunities, but the program failed to achieve its goals. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus) said that the Covid booster program should be postponed until more vaccines are distributed to countries that lack vaccines.
At the same time, President Joe Biden’s booster program itself has also fallen into controversy and has been opposed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention health authorities, who have expressed a lack of scientific support. The EU’s health leaders also stated that since the current Covid injection regimen is still effective, boosters are not yet needed.
Concerted efforts
“High-income countries order twice the dose required by their population,” wrote the former co-chair of the group that reviewed the Covid response last week. “It’s time to express our solidarity with those who have not yet been able to vaccinate their frontline health workers and the most vulnerable.”
Bech Hansen said that this is not just a question of having a Covid vaccine. He said that more coordinated efforts are needed on a global scale to allow countries with sufficient supplies to resell and donate doses.
“This is not a purely high-income and low-income world discussion-it is a bit more complicated than that,” he said. “One can imagine the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union coming together to agree on the way forward.”
