The World Health Organisation (WHO) officials warned that the COVID-19 pandemic will “easily drag on deep into 2022” because the required vaccines are not being adequately provided to poorer countries.
40% of the population is vaccinated in most other continents, while fewer than 5% of the population is vaccinated in Africa.
The UK initially pledged to donate 100 million vaccines to countries in need, but it has only delivered over 10 million vaccines.
Dr. Bruce Aylward, a Senior Advisor to the Director-General of the WHO, urged developed nations to relinquish their “vaccine priority status” so pharmaceutical companies can prioritize low-income countries instead.
He said wealthy countries had to “re-evaluate” where they stood regarding donation commitments made at summits like this summer’s G7 meeting in St. Ives.
“I can tell you we’re not on track. We really need to speed it up or you know what? This pandemic is going to go on for a year longer than it needs to,” Dr. Aylward told the BBC.
COVAX was designed with the intention of making vaccines available to all countries, including wealthy ones. Despite this, most countries in the G7 decided to hold back once they started making one-to-one deals with pharmaceutical companies.
The vast majority of COVID vaccines have been used primarily in countries with high incomes or upper-middle incomes. However, Africa accounts for just 2.6% of all doses administered worldwide.
Oxfam and UNAids are among the group of charitable organizations to have criticized Canada and the UK for procuring vaccines for their own populations through COVAX, the UN-backed vaccine distribution program.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the deaths of more than 4.6 million people, and infected 228 million people worldwide, revealing the stark inequalities among nations in terms of vaccine access and affordability.
A research conducted by the WHO estimates that there will be enough vaccines produced in 2021 to provide protection to 70% of the global population, which is currently at 7.8 billion.
As a result, most vaccines are reserved for wealthy countries, while other vaccine-producing nations limit the export of vaccines in order to provide for their own citizens, an approach which many have described as “vaccine nationalism.”
This trend has been exemplified by some nations’ decision to provide “booster shots” to already vaccinated citizens, rather than giving priority to unvaccinated citizens in poorer, developing countries.
As of October 20, the Global Dashboard for Vaccine Equity which was established by the UN Development Program, the WHO, and Oxford University, released data stating that only 4.51% of people in low-income countries have at least one dose of vaccination. By comparison, 62.79% of people in high-income countries have been administered at least one dose.
Canada and the UK had paid into COVAX, and therefore technically were entitled to receive vaccines through that mechanism. But Rohit Malpani, Oxfam’s global health advisor, maintained that the move was “morally indefensible” since both countries had obtained millions of doses through bilateral agreements.
“They should not have been acquiring these doses from Covax,” he said. “It’s nothing better than double-dipping and means that poorer countries which are already at the back of the queue, will end up waiting longer.”
It is worth noting that the UK was one of the countries that contributed £548 million to Covax last year, making it one of the countries to “kick-start” the vaccination program.
Amid the intense finger-pointing ignited by its reception of a COVAX shipment, the Canadian government was quick to issue a statement stressing that it had stopped using COVAX vaccines.
Karina Gould, Canada’s Minister for International Development, said: “As soon as it became clear that the supply we had secured through our bilateral deals would be sufficient for the Canadian population, we pivoted the doses which we had procured from Covax back to Covax, so they could be redistributed to developing countries.”
COVAX has said it plans to deliver 2 billion doses of vaccines by the end of this year. However, it has so far managed to ship only 371 million doses.
