The risk of rich water 'acquiring' the Covid-19 vaccine
More than 80 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been distributed globally, but only 55 of them reach people in a low-income country.
The 55 doses of Covid-19 vaccine that Guinea received are not even enough to launch a real national vaccination campaign, according to Edouard Mathieu, head of data at Our World in Data at the University of Oxford, the watchdog.
Several Guinea community officials were vaccinated at the end of December as part of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine trial, according to the AP.
"No one has been vaccinated since then," Mathieu said.
As Covid-19 continued to spread around the world with the emergence of dangerous new strains, immunization campaigns in the world's poorest countries could not even begin.
According to an analysis by the New York Times in December 2020, the US ordered 810 million doses from AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Novavax and Sanofi.
This does not mean that rich countries already have vaccine stockpiles, according to Andrea Taylor, a vaccine sales researcher at Duke University in North Carolina.
"High-income countries make up about 16% of the world's population, but now hold 60% of the vaccines that have been ordered," Taylor said.
Experts predict that with such access to vaccines, people in rich countries may begin to see Covid-19 gradually under control over the next year and life may return to somewhat pre-pandemic.
Even low-income countries may have to wait years to start a full immunization campaign, according to Agathe Demarais, representative of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the global economic research body of The Journal.
"Most developing countries will not have widespread access to vaccines by 2023," Demarais said.
Observers believe that the "takeover" of the vaccines of rich countries will only make Covid-19 continue to circulate globally, enabling new strains to emerge and outbreaks, even in
As of January 27, the majority of the 80.2 million Covid-19 vaccine doses distributed globally have reached people in a number of high- and middle-income countries and regions, such as the United States,
The poorest, middle-income countries in the group include India, Myanmar, Ecuador and Indonesia, which received a total of 2.3 million doses of the vaccine.
Meanwhile, the lowest-income countries like Zambia, Bolivia, Tajikistan and Nepal haven't even started vaccinating yet.
The reason for this fact, observers said that the rich and middle-class countries have the priority to buy vaccines first because they have favorable ordering agreements with vaccine developers before clinical trials are available.
"This has led to a global shortage of vaccines and has also led to a bidding war that has pushed vaccine prices up," Gostin said.
"Six months ago, the pre-order agreements were important to us, because we don't know what vaccines will hit the market," Taylor said.
Vaccine stockpiling occurs in tandem with the Covax project, an unprecedented multilateral effort to support the development and equitable distribution of 2 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccine to the poorest countries by the end of 2021.
By promising to buy a certain number of vaccines from manufacturers, participating countries can access any of the vaccines approved in Covax's portfolio, while also creating a market for vaccines.
More than 190 countries have signed into Covax, including rich countries.
"Rich countries want both ways," Gostin said.
The disparity in vaccine orders has sparked many calls for rich countries to stop stocking up and share their supplies with poorer countries through Covax.
"The biggest obstacle to vaccinating people is the quantity of vaccines," said Nicholas Lusiani, representative of Oxfam America.
The US, the EU and other high-income countries can also push vaccine companies to work with other manufacturers, by sharing technology or even giving up intellectual property rights.
In addition, Gostin and colleagues also urged the US to vaccinate only the most vulnerable populations, such as employees and the elderly, to send the excess vaccine to Covax and share with the rest of the world.
"There is ethical and political reasons to prioritize your country because each government's mission is to protect the interests of its people. But that's also the problem," Gostin said.
"This problem is very complicated and there is no easy solution," said Taylor. Because it is difficult for the leaders of a rich country to give vaccines to another, while ensuring the vaccination campaign for their own people.
But one European country is trying to do that.
"That allows us to redistribute the vaccine to other countries," said Dag-Inge Ulstein, Norway's Minister for International Development.
The Norwegian government ensures people in low-income countries have access to effective vaccines as soon as possible.
"It is time for other rich countries to follow Norway," said Julia Belluz, editor of Vox.
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