US, India, China account for 60% of distributed vaccines
According to WHO, of the nearly 2bn Covid-19 jabs that have been sent out, 75% have gone to just 10 countries
Of the two billion Covid-19 vaccine doses distributed globally till now, about 60% have gone to just three countries - the US, India and China, a senior adviser at the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
Senior advisor to WHO director-general, Bruce Aylward made the comments at a press briefing on Friday. “This week, we will see over two billion doses… we will probably pass the two billion doses… landmark in terms of the number of doses of the vaccines and new Covid vaccines that have actually been developed. These have been distributed now in over 212 countries,” Aylward said.
“If we look at that two billion doses, over 75% of it has gone to just 10 countries. And in fact three countries - China, the US
and India - account for about 60% of those doses,” he said.
He said while Covax has played an important role in distributing the Covid-19 doses to 127 countries and getting several countries to start their vaccination drives, the challenge is in the access to the vaccines.
He said the 60% of the two billion doses that have gone to
China, India and the US are “all domestically procured and used”.
Aylward noted that “at the other end of the spectrum”, only about 0.5% of doses globally have gone to the lowest income countries that account for about 10% of the world’s population.
“And even if we look at the lower middle income countries,
it’s only fractionally higher than that in terms of the coverage that we’re getting. So we’re increasingly seeing a two-track recovery and rollout of the vaccines,” he said.
“We saw how long it took to get the scale up of vaccines in high income countries. It takes a consistent supply of vaccines. So this is the crucial piece that we’ve got to fix in the next two months if we are going to be on track to get out of the pandemic,” Aylward said.
Sinovac gets emergency use approval for children
China has approved emergency use of Sinovac Biotech’s Covid-19 vaccine in people aged between three and 17, its chairman Yin Weidong told state TV on Friday.
Preliminary results from Phase I and II clinical trials showed the vaccine could trigger immune response in three to 17 year-old participants, and most adverse reactions were mild.
US is planning more vaccine donations
The US government plans to provide more vaccine donations in the months ahead and is counting on the authorisation of AstraZeneca doses that are stuck in a safety review, a state department official said.
Distribution of an initial 25 million doses worldwide is based on maximising global coverage, addressing surges and heading off others, and responding to requests from abroad, Gayle Smith, the state department’s coordinator for global Covid response and health security, told reporters on Friday.