Rich nations to corner early doses of vaccines
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Wealthy countries have already locked up more than a billion doses of coronavirus vaccines, raising worries that the rest of the world will be at the back of the queue in the global effort to defeat the pathogen.
Moves by the US and UK to secure supplies from Sanofi and partner GlaxoSmithKline Plc, and another pact between Japan and Pfizer Inc, are the latest in a string of agreements. The European Union has also been aggressive in obtaining shots, well before anyone knows whether they will work.
Although international groups and a number of nations are promising to make vaccines affordable and accessible to all, doses will likely struggle to keep up with demand in a world of roughly 7.8 billion people. The possibility wealthier countries will monopolise supply, a scenario that played out in the 2009 swine flu pandemic, has fuelled concerns among poor nations and health advocates.
The US, Britain, European Union and
Japan have so far secured about 1.3 billion doses of potential Covid immunisations, according to Londonbased analytics firm Airfinity. Options to snap up additional supplies or pending deals would add more than 1.5 billion doses to that total, its figures show.
"Even if you have an optimistic assessment of the scientific progress, there's still not enough vaccines for the world," according to Rasmus Bech Hansen, Airfinity's chief executive officer. What's also important to consider is that most of the vaccines may require two doses, he said.
A few front-runners, such as the University of Oxford and partner AstraZeneca Plc and a Pfizer-BioNTech SE collaboration, are already in final-stage studies, fuelling hopes that a weapon to fight Covid will be available soon. But developers must still clear a number of hurdles: proving their shots are effective, gaining approval and ramping up manufacturing. Worldwide supply may not reach 1 billion doses until the first quarter of
2022, Airfinity forecasts. Investing in production capacity all over the world is seen as one of the keys to solving the dilemma, and pharma companies are starting to outline plans to deploy shots widely. Sanofi and Glaxo intend to provide a significant portion of worldwide capacity in
2021 and 2022 to a global initiative that's focused on accelerating development and production and distributing shots equitably.
The WHO, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance are working together to bring about equitable and broad access.