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The United States is under increasing pressure to share Covid-19 vaccine doses with less wealthy countries, as advocates call for the prevention of an emerging ‘vaccine apartheid’ and stress the strategic and diplomatic importance of sharing the vaccine. essential drugs.
Calls to share vaccine doses intensified this week after the Biden administration announced an additional purchase of 100 million doses of vaccine from Johnson & Johnson. The U.S. government has now purchased enough vaccine doses from Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson to immunize 500 million people – almost the entire eligible population twice.
The administration also owns the rights to 100 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine. The vaccine has not been authorized in the United States, but its use is authorized elsewhere in the world. AstraZeneca has called on the United States to “seriously consider” donating vaccines elsewhere, a company spokesperson said.
“I’m doing this because, in this war effort, we need maximum flexibility,” Biden said at a White House briefing announcing the purchase this week. “There is always a chance that we will encounter unexpected challenges.”
On Friday, Biden and the leaders of Japan, Australia and India – an informal task force known as Quads announced they would work to increase manufacturing capacity, with the aim of sending 1 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines to Asian and Pacific island countries in 2022.
But officials in the Biden administration continued to resist sending doses of the vaccine stored overseas, saying it was part of a plan to be “over-prepared and over-supplied” in the event that Emerging variants of Covid-19 or waning immunity would require booster shots.
“We want to be part of the worldwide efforts to immunize people around the world in various countries,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, citing the US $ 2 billion pledge. United in favor of Covax, the global effort to share. Vaccines against covid19.
However, she said that “the president’s first priority and primary goal is to ensure that the American people are vaccinated. And once we get to that point, we’ll have a discussion on what’s next ”.
The administration strategy is also a protection against possible manufacturing disruptions and could provide a supply of vaccines for children, if and when clinical trials show they can be used safely in children under 16. years.
The Biden administration intends to lift all vaccine eligibility requirements by May 1 and hopes to vaccinate all 267 million eligible Americans by the July 4 holiday. More than 530,000 Americans have died after contracting the virus, a figure the administration often cites to defend its reliance on the vaccine rollout.
“As I told you before, I carry a map in my pocket with the number of Americans who have died from Covid to date,” Biden said in a prime-time speech Thursday. “It’s at the back of my schedule. As of now, the total death toll in America: 527,726. That’s more deaths than in WWI, WWII, Vietnam War and September 11 combined.
However, countries like China and Russia have agreed to share vaccines to gain a strategic advantage. Chinese vaccine makers have pledged half a billion doses to 45 countries, according to an Associated Press tally.
“We might be outclassed by others who are more willing to share, even if they do so for cynical reasons,” Ivo H Daalder, former NATO Ambassador and Chairman of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, told New York. Times. “I think countries will remember who was there for us when we needed them.”
A recent World Bank analysis found that 82% of high-income countries had started immunization, compared to 3% of low-income countries. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s January forecast, middle-income countries are likely to mass immunize their populations by the end of 2022, but 84 of the world’s poorest countries are unlikely to complete mass immunization campaigns. before at least 2024 and may never achieve collective immunity. .
“It’s going to define the global economy, the global political landscape, travel, pretty much everything,” Agathe Demarais, the unit’s forecasting director, said at the time of the report’s release.
Advocates have described the chasm in vaccine access between rich and poor countries as potential “vaccine apartheid”. Many have also said failure to share vaccines threatens to repeat the failures of the HIV / AIDS epidemic.
“A ‘me first’ approach might serve short-term political interests, but it is doomed to failure and will lead to a protracted recovery, with trade and travel continuing to suffer,” wrote Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in the Guardian.
“The threat is clear: as long as the virus spreads anywhere, it has more opportunities to mutate and potentially interfere with vaccine effectiveness everywhere. We could go back to square one, ”he said.
Ghebreyesus is among advocates who have called on pharmaceutical companies to give up intellectual property rights granted by the World Trade Organization. The hope is that the temporary patent waiver would allow large-scale manufacture of vaccines.
The petition would waive certain rights guaranteed by what is known as the TRIPS Agreement. The issue is before the WTO, which is expected to debate the petition twice at upcoming meetings in April. The petition is widely supported by low income countries and opposed by high income countries.
“We have to make sure that at the end of the day we deliver results,” said Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, WTO Director General. That way, she said, “the millions of people who are looking forward to us know that we are working on real solutions.”
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