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HEALTH-VIRUS-VACCINES-INEQUALITY
No end to pandemic without equal vaccine access: experts
PARIS, Feb 13, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – Developing new Covid-19 vaccines will fail
to end the pandemic unless all countries receive doses in a fast and fair
manner, disease experts warned Saturday.
As several nations consider implementing vaccine passports when
international travel resumes, the authors of an open letter published in the
Lancet medical journal said vaccine stockpiling in wealthier countries would
only prolong the global health emergency.
They warned that “vaccine nationalism” could leave the Covax initiative
aimed at getting vaccines to low- and middle-income countries facing a huge
dosage shortfall for several years to come.
“The stark reality is that the world now needs more doses of COVID-19
vaccines than any other vaccine in history in order to immunise enough people
to achieve global vaccine immunity,” said lead author Olivier Wouters from
the London School of Economics and Political Science.
“Unless vaccines are distributed more equitably, it could be years before
the coronavirus is brought under control at a global level.”
Despite there being more than two dozen Covid-19 vaccines either in
development or approved for use, lower income countries still have enormous
logistical challenges to procure immunisations and deliver them to
populations.
These include a lack of funds to purchase vaccines, as well as poor
infrastructure to transport and store them — especially since the mRNA
vaccines on the market currently need to be kept ultra cold throughout their
delivery.
And despite unprecedented public and private investment in vaccine
development and procurement, Covax estimates it will need an additional $6.8
billion in 2021 to secure supplies for 92 developing nations.
Based on available sales figures, the authors said that rich nations
representing 16 percent of the global population had already secured 70
percent of vaccine doses — enough to inoculate every one of their owns
citizen several times over.
“Securing large quantities of vaccines in this way amounts to countries
placing widespread vaccination of their own populations ahead of the
vaccination of health-care workers and high-risk populations in poorer
countries,” said co-author Mark Jit from the London School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine.
The letter called on manufacturers to accelerate technology transfer to
developing nations to help them produce doses domestically, as well as price
controls for what it termed “prohibitively expensive” vaccines currently on
the market.
The authors said that vaccines developed by China, India and Russia, once
authorised by the World Health Organization, could be a big help to poorer
nations as their supply and storage were simpler than the US/European
alternatives.
BSS/AFP/SSS/0827 hrs