Which countries still have no vaccines?

While close to 100 per cent of Gibraltar’s population have been vaccinated, countries like Nicaragua are still waiting to receive their first doses of COVID-19 vaccine

FRANKFURT: More than 600 million vaccinations have taken place worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). But while close to 100 per cent of Gibraltar’s population, for instance, have already been vaccinated, countries like Nicaragua are still waiting to receive their first doses of vaccine.

WHO Secretary-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus referred to the situation on Tuesday as a ‘farce.’ He called for global production to be cranked up and vaccines to be fairly distributed to tackle the acute phase of the pandemic.

On the global vaccination map, there is still a whole swath of African countries awaiting supplies — from Libya to Madagascar. Those countries do not even feature in the WHO’s vaccination statistics. The picture is similar in Central Asia, as well as in individual countries such as North Korea, Cuba, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. That does not, however, necessarily mean that the respective countries have received absolutely no shots up to now. Bosnia is due to receive its first big, direct delivery at the end of May, but it has already received some vaccines donated by neighboring Serbia.

Zero vaccine doses for 10 African countries

“With regard to Africa, we have the good news that 44 countries have already received vaccine supplies. But, conversely, this also means, of course, that 10 countries have received no vaccines up to now,” says Clemens Schwanhold, political officer at the non-governmental organisation ONE.

Madagascar, Burundi and Eritrea are among those countries whose governments believed that the virus could be fought by other means. Tanzania, in the meantime, has undergone a change of heart after the sudden death of coronavirus skeptic President John Magufuli following unconfirmed rumours of a COVID-19 infection.

Schwanhold believes the government led by Magufuli’s successor, President Samia Suluhu Hassan, is likely to order vaccine supplies in the next few weeks. “Then it would still take a few months, ideally a few weeks, until anything arrives. In the second half of the year, something could be possible.”

COVAX — A good idea that packs little punch?

In the interests of global health, we need to create herd immunity against the new coronavirus, including among people living in the remotest corners of the Earth. As long as the virus keeps on encountering lots of new hosts it can continue mutating and, at some point, it is possible that variants will develop that can evade all existing vaccines. “None of us is safe until we all are safe” is a common refrain about COVID-19 — and it is the idea behind the COVAX programme to provide global access to vaccination. The member states of the WHO have been divided into two groups. One is made up of 98 more affluent countries, which are funding subsidised or free vaccine supplies for the 92 poorer ones. Germany is one of the COVAX programme’s biggest benefactors, providing almost €1 billion ($1.19 billion) in funding.

“The problem is that there are not many more vaccine doses available because the EU and the United States have already secured the large majority of them,” says Sonja Weinreich, who is in charge of health issues at Brot für die Welt (Bread for the World), a relief agency run by the Protestant churches in Germany. “So this mechanism hasnt been able to properly take hold because this solidarity just doesn’t exist.”