3 THE UGLY: And rich nations are covering their populations far faster as poor countries remain far behind

One of the clearest takeaways to have emerged from the global roll-out of the vaccination drive has been that there remains a world of a difference in equitable distribution of coverage. As things stand, this distribution appears to be largely defined by wealth. More than 10 months since first the shot of the Covid-19 vaccine was administered across the world, access to vaccines (and their administration) remains out of reach for the poorest nations of the world.

The chart here denotes the relationship between the per capita GDP of nations and their vaccination coverage. The x-axis depicts per capita GDP (in US$); the higher a country is located here, the richer it is. The y-axis is the proportion of the country’s population fully vaccinated – countries on the right have the best coverage, while those on the left fare the worst. While most of Africa lies clumped together on the bottom left (the poorest and worst covered by vaccines), as we move up the x-axis to the richer nations of the world, they start moving to the right. The trend line drawn on the chart shows that the rate at which a nation’s wealth increases the chances of it having better vaccination coverage. Of the 20 countries with the lowest coverage of vaccines, 18 are in the lowest quartile of per capita GDP. All 20 of these nations have overall coverage under 1% and 17 of these are from Africa – Haiti, Turkmenistan and Yemen are the only non-african countries in the bottom 20.

Another 20 countries don’t even show up on this chart as they haven’t even administered a single dose of the vaccine.

This chart is all the more important now as some western countries have already started administering booster doses despite repeated requests by WHO for them to pass on giving booster doses until at least the end of the year. The US, Britain, France, Germany and Israel are among the countries that have begun administering boosters or have announced plans to do so. On Monday, the European Medicines Agency gave its endorsement to EU countries offering a third dose to adults.