Vaccine disparities sound the alarm as Covid variants multiply

Photographer: Jonne Roriz / Bloomberg

Global gaps in access to Covid-19 vaccines raise concerns that the continued spread of the coronavirus will produce more dangerous versions of the pathogen, weakening medical weapons and further crippling economies.

In a race to catch up with emerging coronavirus variants, rich countries are already benefiting from powerful vaccines. While the United States, Great Britain and the European Union have given citizens 24 million doses to date – more than half of the injections administered globally – many countries have yet to start their campaigns.

Disparities in immunity pose a threat to states that have wealth and those that do not. Giving the coronavirus the opportunity to move forward and generate new mutants would have significant economic and public health consequences, adding to the pain, with the death toll surpassing 2 million.

Growth forecasts

“We cannot leave parts of the world without access to vaccines because it will just come back to us,” said Charlie Weller, head of vaccines at the Wellcome Health Research Foundation. “It puts everyone in the world at risk.”

Countries rely on effective vaccinations to save lives and boost businesses. the The World Bank’s projections for 4% growth this year depend on the widespread deployment of vaccines. An increase in Covid cases and a delay in the delivery of inoculations, however, could limit the expansion to just 1.6%.

High-income countries got 85% of vaccines from Pfizer Inc. and all from Moderna Inc., according to a London-based research company Airfinity Ltd. Much of the world will rely on British drug maker AstraZeneca Plc, whose vaccine is cheaper and easier to distribute, as well as other manufacturers such as Sinovac Biotech Ltd.

Read more: Africa remains with few options for vaccines, says South Africa

Out of 42 countries Deploying Covid vaccines from Jan.8, 36 were from high-income countries and the rest were middle-income, according to World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. A growing number of countries are pursuing their own supply agreements, in addition to participating in a global collaboration known as Covax.

Future mutants

The urgency increases as the pandemic continues into a second year. The new variants that have appeared in the UK, South Africa and Brazil appear to be spreading much faster than previous versions. Over the past month, “a new dimension of risk has opened up to the world,” said Rajeev Venkayya, president of the vaccines business of Takeda Pharmaceutical Co.

Reducing deaths and illnesses has been seen as the main driver of rapid vaccine delivery, said Venkayya, who worked in the George W. Bush administration to develop a U.S. pandemic influenza plan and led the administration of vaccines Gates Foundation.

“We now understand that it is also very, very important to control transmission,” he said, “not only to protect the most vulnerable populations, but also to reduce the evolutionary risk associated with this virus.”

While there is no evidence to suggest that the current crop of vaccines is ineffective against these variants, future mutants may be less responsive, Wellcome’s Weller said.

Drugmakers say they could tweak their plans to counter new variants in a matter of weeks if needed. The likelihood that such adaptations will be needed has increased, Venkayya said.

“The more the virus is allowed to persist in different parts of the world where we do not have a vaccine,” said Anna Marriott, health policy adviser at the anti-poverty group Oxfam, “the greater the danger of new variants which could be more aggressive, more virulent or transmissible”.

Covid vaccines have been tested for their ability to prevent symptoms, not transmission. Yet their performance in clinical trials gives an indication of their effectiveness against the spread.

Efficiency gap

The rollout of plans from Pfizer-BioNTech SE and Moderna that have achieved efficiency levels of around 95% has raised the question of whether everyone will have access to such high levels of protection.

“The divide isn’t just about access to vaccines,” said Yanzhong Huang, senior researcher for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It is also a question of access to effective vaccines.”

One of the gunshots relied on by low- and middle-income countries, AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, raised concerns in Australia it might not be effective enough to generate collective immunity. Local health officials, however, said they believed it would be comparable to injections from Pfizer and Moderna in preventing people from getting seriously ill.