Variants, boosters turn rich-poor vaccine gap into chasm

The global initiative to share coronavirus vaccines fairly already scaled back its pledge to the world’s poor once. Now, to meet even that limited promise, COVAX would have to deliver more than a million doses every hour until the end of the year in some of the world’s most challenging places.

That seems unlikely: Gavi, the vaccine alliance that helps run COVAX, warned in internal documents that a substantial number of doses might only show up in late 2022 or even 2023 as wealthy countries drag out their donations while locking in contracts for new shots by the hundreds of millions.

Even if the U.N.-backed initiative secured the doses and overcame the logistical hurdles, the developing world would still face a gaping need. COVAX’s new promise is for 1.4 billion doses, but according to the documents, mid- and low-income countries need 4.65 billion to vaccinate 70% of their populations.

And that need is only expected to increase - as many countries pursue boosters and tweaked vaccines that can tackle new variants.

At this point more than half the world’s population has received at least one shot, but only 6% of the population in the poorest countries have. Meanwhile, richer countries are pushing ahead with buying up third and fourth doses for their citizens.