NEW DELHI: With Americans, Britons, and Canadians rolling up their sleeves to receive coronavirus vaccines, the route out of the pandemic now seems clear to many in the West, even if the rollout will take many months. But for poorer countries, the road will be far longer and rougher.
The ambitious initiative known as COVAX created to ensure the entire world has access to COVID-19 vaccines has secured only a fraction of the 2 billion doses it hopes to buy over the next year, has yet to confirm any actual deals to ship out vaccines, and is short on cash.
The virus that has killed more than 1.6 million people has exposed vast inequities between countries; as fragile health systems and smaller economies were often hit harder.
COVAX was set up by the World Health Organisation (WHO); vaccines alliance GAVI and CEPI, a global coalition to fight epidemics; to avoid the international stampede for vaccines that have accompanied past outbreaks and would reinforce those imbalances.
But now some experts say the chances that coronavirus shots will be shared fairly between rich nations and the rest are fading fast. With vaccine supplies currently limited, developed countries, some of which helped fund the research with taxpayer money, are under tremendous pressure to protect their own populations and are buying up shots.
Meanwhile, some poorer countries that signed up for the initiative are looking for alternatives because of fears it won’t deliver.
“It’s simple math,” said Arnaud Bernaert, head of global health at the World Economic Forum. Of the approximately 12 billion doses the pharmaceutical industry is expected to produce next year; about 9 billion shots have already been reserved by rich countries.
“COVAX has not secured enough doses; and the way the situation may unfold is they will probably only get these doses fairly late.”
To date, COVAX’s only confirmed, legally binding agreement is for up to 200 million doses; though that includes an option to order several times that the number of additional doses; GAVI spokesman James Fulker said. It has agreements for another 500 million vaccines, but those are not legally binding.