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Less affluent countries may have to wait years to vaccinate their populations
As a SECOND wave of coronavirus infections sweeps across Europe and America continues to break daily records for new cases of covid-19, the need for a vaccine is more urgent than ever. Pharmaceutical companies are fighting to bring a viable drug to market. And this week has come a bright ray of hope. On November 9, Pfizer and BioNTech, two pharmaceutical companies, announced that their investigational covid-19 vaccine was over 90% effective in initial trials. But there is still a long way to go before vaccines are available in sufficient quantities to immunize the whole world. It is therefore not surprising that countries are striving to secure the supply of candidate vaccines, even before their safety and efficacy have been established.
Most of these agreements, known as advance market commitments (AMCs), were made by rich countries. Data collected by researchers at the Global Health Innovation Center at Duke University shows that high-income countries account for more than half of all such confirmed purchases. America alone is responsible for nearly a sixth of these AMCs, having pre-ordered more than a billion doses from half a dozen drug makers. This equates to three hits per person. Canada purchased ten doses for each of its citizens, the most for a country or an alliance per person (see table). A group of wealthy countries has already agreed to buy around 600 million doses of the drug Pfizer-BioNTech, nearly half of the total drugmakers say they can produce by the end of 2021.
Not everyone will have this chance. Duke researchers believe poorer countries will need to rely primarily on COVAX, an alliance co-led by the World Health Organization to develop and distribute a covid-19 vaccine. The program, which pledged to purchase 500 million doses, pledged equal access to all participating countries, regardless of income. But the alliance only guarantees that they will receive enough doses to immunize a fifth of their population.
Some wealthy countries share with less favored countries. Australia, which has pledged to purchase five doses for each of its citizens, has also offered to provide vaccines to its Pacific neighbors, such as Vanuatu and Kiribati. China, which announced it had joined the COVAX facility on Oct.9, has also pledged to share its vaccines with poorer countries with which it has close ties, including Burma, Cambodia and the Philippines.
Of course, all this will not be relevant if the supply of effective vaccines proves to be insufficient. Or if people refuse to take them. In June, a group of researchers asked 13,000 people in 19 countries if they would take a safe and effective vaccine. Over a quarter of respondents said no.
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