Vaccine gap persists, with an income bias

Many outside the richer economies are still awaiting the gift of the jab

The recently-concluded annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland talked about the difference between the rich countries and the others when it came to Covid19 vaccinations.

“Despite lower-income economies having protected on average 46 per cent of their population with two doses, the global vaccine equity gap persists and too many of the most vulnerable people in lower-income societies are still not protected,” said Seth Berkley, chief executive officer of the global vaccine alliance Gavi, in an article on the WEF website.

Richer countries had over eight times as many vaccinations administered, including booster doses, than their low-income counterparts, showed a Business Standard analysis of the numbers as of May 26, the day the meeting ended, from the World Health Organisation and the tracker, Our World in Data.

India falls under the lower-middle-income category of countries, with a gross national income of between $1,046 and $4,095 per person in 2020, as per a World Bank classification. Lower-middle-income countries have got close to 121 doses per 100 people. India has done slightly better than its peers in the group. It is 138 for India, which was described during the pandemic as the world’s biggest vaccine manufacturer.

Business Standard then looked at the five countries with the highest number of recorded Covid-19 cases. The United States, India, Brazil, France and Germany recorded a total of 211 million cases. They accounted for more than 40 per cent of the total cases in the world. Between them, there is some disparity in the percentage of people who are fully vaccinated. France is the highest with 78.4 per cent of the population fully vaccinated. India had the lowest of the five with 64.1 per cent of the population being fully vaccinated (Chart 1).

The Indian government dashboard records over 85 per cent vaccination, but refers to the adult population rather than total population. The situation is worse when it comes to booster doses. The other four have an average of around 47 per cent of the population having received booster shots. It is just 3.5 per cent for India (Chart 2).

Many countries having a higher percentage of the population given boosters have seen a rise in new cases despite this precaution. For example, the country with the highest number of average daily cases newly reported over the last seven days is the US, with around 100,000 cases as of the day Davos ended. It has vaccinated 30.5 per cent of the population with boosters. Australia, which has given boosters to 53.2 per cent of the population, had over 40,000 cases. Japan had over 30,000 cases, despite more than 55.4 per cent of the population having received booster doses.

India required a ninemonth gap for getting additional doses for those who are fully vaccinated when it announced the availability of additional doses from April 10.

“All those who are more than 18 years of age...(and)...have completed 9 months after the administration of (the) second dose, would be eligible for (the) Precaution Dose. This facility would be available in all private vaccination centres,” it said.

India is currently averaging only around 2,000 cases a day.