POOR COUNTRIES LAST IN LINE FOR VACCINE
Rich countries have locked up world’s potential supply
An ambitious humanitarian project to deliver coronavirus vaccines to the world’s poorest people is facing potential shortages of money, cargo planes, refrigeration and vaccines themselves — and is running into skepticism even from some of those it’s intended to help most.
In one of the biggest obstacles, rich countries have locked up most of the world’s potential vaccine supply through 2021, and the U.S. and others have refused to join the project, called Covax.
“The supply of vaccines is not going to be there in the near term, and the money also isn’t there,” warned Rohit Malpani, a public health consultant who previously worked for Doctors Without Borders.
Covax was conceived as a way of giving countries access to coronavirus vaccines regardless of their wealth.
It is being led by the World Health Organization, a U.N. agency; Gavi, a public-private alliance, funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, that buys immunizations for 60 percent of the world’s children; and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI, another Gates-supported public-private collaboration.
Covax’s aim is to buy 2 billion doses by the end of 2021, though it isn’t yet clear whether the successful vaccine will require one dose or two for the world’s 7.8 billion people. Countries taking part in the project can either buy vaccines from Covax or get them for free, if needed.
One early problem that has emerged: Some of the world’s wealthiest nations have negotiated their own deals directly with drug companies, meaning they don’t need to participate in the endeavor at all. China, Russia and the U.S. have said they do not intend to join. Other countries, including France and Germany, will technically join Covax but won’t procure vaccines for their citizens via the initiative.
Not only that, but firm agreements with Covax came in too late to prevent more than half of all potential doses being snapped up by countries representing 13% of the world’s population, according to an Oxfam study.
“As a continent of 1.2 billion people, we still have concerns,” Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director John Nkengasong said Thursday.
He praised Covax for the solidarity it represents but said there are serious questions about allocation, saying African nations’ envoys are meeting directly with vaccine manufacturers to ask “if we came to the table with money, how would we get enough vaccines to cover the gap?”
The European Union has contributed 400 million euros ($469 million) to support Covax, but the 27-country bloc won’t use Covax to buy vaccines. Instead, the EU has signed its own deals to buy more than 1 billion doses, after some member states raised concerns about what was described as Gavi’s “dictatorship” approach to running Covax.
Gavi, WHO and CEPI announced in September that countries representing twothirds of the world’s population had joined Covax, but they acknowledged they still need about $300 million more from governments or other sources. By the end of next year, Gavi estimates the project will need $5 billion more.
Covax did reach a major agreement this week for 200 million doses from the Indian vaccine maker Serum Institute, though the company made clear that a large portion of those will go to people in India.
Covax said negotiations to secure vaccines are moving forward despite the lack of funds.
Gavi’s Aurelia Nguyen, managing director of Covax, said that nothing similar has ever been attempted in public health.
Covax “is a hugely ambitious project,” she said, “but it is the only plan on the table to end the pandemic across the world.”
Cheng and Hinnant write for The Associated Press.