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President Biden calls on world leaders to pledge to vaccinate 70% of the world’s population by September of next year. But research shows rich countries still hold surplus vaccines, many of which may soon be thrown away.
Boarding a plane to Iran this summer, Bahar was delighted to see her father for the first time in four years.
She had no idea that the coronavirus was about to cross the country – and her family – in a deadly second wave. She was first a friend of the family, who was preparing her son’s wedding when she fell ill. She died soon after. Then it was her father’s uncle, then an old aunt. Bahar was desperately worried about his grandmother who had only received one dose of the vaccine and was still awaiting her second.
Bahar is 20 years old and lives in the United States where she was vaccinated in April.
Even though she knew she was somewhat protected, she spent the last days of her trip cloistered at her father’s house, worried about who the virus would attack next. Few of her family members have been vaccinated in a country with low supplies.
Shortly after returning to the United States, she found out that her father was ill. She was far away and paralyzed with fear.
“It’s like survivor guilt,” she said. “I left Iran perfectly healthy, perfectly healthy just because I received two injections of the Pfizer vaccine.” Her father recovered, but many older parents did not. “I felt pretty guilty knowing this.”
This imbalance in vaccine supply makes the statistics startling. Just over half of the world has yet to receive even a single dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
According to Human Rights Watch, 75% of Covid vaccines have gone to 10 countries. The Economist Intelligence Unit has calculated that half of all vaccines made so far have gone to 15% of the world’s population, with the richest countries in the world administering 100 times more vaccines than the poorest.
In June, members of the G7 – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States – pledged to donate a billion doses to poor countries over the next year.
“I smiled when I saw this,” said Agathe Demarais, senior author of a recent report on the global vaccine supply to the Economist Intelligence Unit and a former diplomat. “I saw this a lot. You know it’s never going to happen.”
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The UK has pledged $ 100 million of that pledge, so far it has donated just under $ 9 million. President Biden has pledged $ 580 million of which the United States has delivered $ 140 million so far. And the European bloc has pledged 250 million doses by the end of the year – it has sent around 8%.
Like many middle-income countries, Iran has purchased vaccines from Covax, the WHO-backed global program to get doses where they are needed most. Covax buys and then sells vaccines at low prices to middle-income countries and donates to poor countries.
But Covax faced a major supply problem. It planned to distribute two billion doses in 2021, most of it from a facility in India, but when a second wave of infections crippled India in May, the government issued an export ban.
Since then, Covax has relied on doses given by rich countries. And the supply has been slow, some of the host countries have not yet vaccinated 2% of their population.
“Currently, doses tend to be shared in low volumes, short term, and with shorter expiration dates than ideal, making it a huge logistical lift to allocate and deliver to countries capable of absorbing them. », Explains Aurélia Nguyen, general manager of the Covax establishment.
It is not a global supply issue. Rich countries have accumulated vaccine surpluses, according to Airfinity, a scientific analysis company that studies the global supply. Vaccine manufacturers now manufacture 1.5 billion doses each month, 11 billion will have been produced by the end of the year.
“They are producing a huge number of doses. It has increased dramatically over the last three or four months,” says Dr Matt Linley, senior researcher at Airfinity.
The richest countries in the world may have 1.2 billion doses they don’t need – even if they start giving boosters.
A fifth of those doses – 241 million vaccines – could be wasted if they are not given very soon, says Dr Linley. Poorer countries are likely to be unable to accept vaccines unless they have at least two months left before they expire.
“I don’t think it was necessarily the rich countries that were greedy, rather it was that they didn’t know which vaccines would work,” says Dr Linley. “So they had to buy several.”
With its latest research, Airfinity hopes to show governments that there is a healthy supply of vaccines and that they don’t need to keep surpluses. Instead, they can give what they don’t need now and be sure that more doses will be produced in the months to come.
“They don’t want to be caught off guard,” explains Agathe Demarais. “It is also a matter of domestic political pressure because part of the electorate would probably be very unhappy to see vaccines being given, if there is the feeling that they are still needed at home.”
The UK government says it has no vaccine stock and has reached an agreement with Australia to share four million doses that will be returned from Australia’s own allocation at the end of the year.
“The supply and deliveries of vaccines have been carefully managed in the UK to offer all who are eligible the opportunity to get vaccinated as soon as possible,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Business said. social.
Aurélia Nguyen from Covax says it’s not just governments that need to act.
“We also need manufacturers to meet their public commitments to Covax and prioritize bilateral agreements with countries that already have enough doses.”
If global vaccine makers now produce 1.5 billion doses each month, she says, the question is why so few reach poor countries. “Where the need for Covax is greatest, governments should swap places in the queue so that we can get the doses we ordered earlier.”
For Bahar and his family, these doses are not just numbers, they are real lives, friends and family.
Every few days she hears another story from someone who has passed away. When friends at college said they didn’t want to get the shot, she used to try to argue with them but she can’t take it anymore, it’s too upsetting.
“I’m just trying to let it go, but it’s really hard to see people not using the privilege they have.”
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