Nationalist bias in vaccines hinders the global battle
The Executive Director of the GAVI Vaccine Alliance, Seth berkley, admitted this Sunday that the great challenge to advance in global vaccination against covid-19 it is access to doses.
“The big challenge right now is access to vaccines. We have placed orders for more than 2 billion doses, but most of them arrive in the second half of the year. In the first semester, due to the nationalist component in the field of vaccines, there have been fewer doses available “Berkley told CBS News.
Berkley assured that if they had more doses they could “make them available” to a greater number of countries.
He cited the case of India, which he considered, “by volume, the largest supplier of vaccines for the developing world”, but warned that “it has intensified its vaccination programs”, due to the new wave of coronavirus infections it faces. .
“And that has meant that they have needed more doses”therefore, “they have made less available to the rest of the world.”
“We had expected in March and April around 90 million doses, and we suspect that we will get much, much less than that, which is a problem,” admitted the expert, who observed a “race” on immunization with rich countries. administering the doses “to a large part of its population.”
In that sense, he indicated that his hope is that developed countries “begin to make their vaccines available to the rest of the world, including those they may not use.”
“For example, the United States not only has Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, but it also has vaccines from Novavax and, of course, Astrazeneca. These could be available and would make a big difference in terms of supply to the world “, he claimed.
Regarding the goal that by April 7, when World Health Day was celebrated, vaccines against covid-19 would be administered in all countries, Berkley indicated that the COVAX program, the international initiative to carry out this massive campaign of immunization of which GAVI is a part, works on it.
“We are on the way,” he said, noting that they have delivered vaccines to 84 countries in the last six weeks and hope to reach more than 100 in the next two.