FOR MUCH of this year, the global distribution of covid vaccines has been enormously inequitable. The rollout has been a two-speed affair, with richer countries in the fast lane. Today, in low-income countries, less than 2% of adults are fully vaccinated, compared with 50% in high-income ones. A new analysis from Airfinity, a life-sciences data firm, spells out the startling implications: if rich countries do not redistribute surplus vaccine this year, between 1m and 2.
He says that countries have been stockpiling because of past uncertainties over supply. As vaccine production ramped up at the start of the year, supplies were small and unreliable. All that has changed. Today more than 1bn doses a month are reliably produced, and this will continue to increase every month this year. In November 2021, the world will make 1.5bn doses of covid vaccine. This is more than all the vaccines made in the first four months of this year.
Yet Covax, the biggest buyer of vaccines and supplier of them to poorer countries, has struggled to get hold of doses it has bought and has shipped only 230m this year. It faces a variety of difficulties. A critical one has been that its most important suppliers, in India, have been prevented from exporting by their government. Seth Berkley, head of the vaccine-finance group Gavi says Covax invested more than $1bn in Indian vaccine production, and helped with the technology transfer.
Yet, although vaccine donations are urgently needed, Dr Aylward argues that Covax ought to be getting its orders directly from the firms themselves, rather than as donations from third parties. He urges a more rational approach: that countries swap early-delivery contracts with Covax. Australia has been doing exactly this with Britain, Poland, and Singapore. Australia needs vaccines now but is not yet scheduled to receive deliveries.
MonicaGandhi9 Time to start a Twitter movement: donateyourbooster
And what about ~10mil people died from hunger in 2020, it is 2,5 more than that died from or with Covid-19? Why all these MSM narratives around vaccines only? Why is the Israel which is the most vaccinated country is now with the highest infection rate in the world?
geoffreyyork We in South Africa are now part of the 'vaccine gluttony'. We have the vaccines, but not the arms... We should also be sending jabs out of SA into Africa.
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