Surplus vaccines with rich nations to hit 1.2bn doses

AS ON SEPT 2, A MERE 1.8% OF THE POPULATION IN LOW-INCOME COUNTRIES HAVE RECEIVED JUST ONE DOSE

NEW DELHI: Western countries and Japan together have roughly 500 million doses of coronavirus vaccines that can be immediately redistributed to poorer nations and, by the end of 2021, this surplus stock will balloon to 1.2 billion, according to a new analysis of global vaccine utilisation and supply set to be released next week.

The assessment, by science analytics company Airfinity, quantifies for the first time the stocks – available today and expected supply – that can be shared by high income countries without jeopardising their own vaccination campaigns.

These doses can greatly address a huge inequity in supply: University of Oxford’s Our World in Data estimates that as on September 2, a mere 1.8% of the population in low-income countries received at least one dose. In high-income countries, this proportion is 64%.

The new findings on surpluses are based on the analysis of supplies to the US, the UK, the European Union, Canada and Japan and their vaccination rates, and assume that these countries will keep giving doses to eligible populations (in most cases, everyone above the age of 12) with booster shots six months later.

“The world has reached a tipping point when it comes to vaccine availability and production. For large Western countries, the challenge is no longer supply, but demand. The global supply chain is successfully increasing production and our detailed forecast shows that high income countries can have confidence that there is plenty of vaccine coming and this should reduce the need for stockpiling,” said Airfinity’s co-founder and CEO Rasmus Bech Hansen in an email to Hindustan Times.