Coronavirus vaccine shortages hit 60 countries as global deliveries stall
- The global vaccine-sharing initiative Covax has in the past week shipped more than 25,000 doses to poorer countries only twice on any given day
- The expected delivery of second doses in the 12-week window currently recommended is now in doubt
Covax, the global initiative to provide vaccines to nations lacking the clout to negotiate for scarce supplies on their own, has in the past week shipped more than 25,000 doses to low-income countries only twice on any given day. Deliveries have all but halted since Monday.
During the past two weeks, according to data compiled daily by Unicef, fewer than 2 million Covax doses in total were cleared for shipment to 92 countries in the developing world – the same amount injected in Britain alone.
On Friday, the head of the World Health Organization slammed the “shocking imbalance” in global Covid-19 vaccination. WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that while one in four people in rich countries had received a vaccine, only one in 500 people in poorer countries had got a dose.
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Covax will only ship vaccines cleared by WHO, and countries are increasingly impatient. Supplies are dwindling in some of the first countries to receive Covax shipments, and the expected delivery of second doses in the 12-week window currently recommended is now in doubt. In a statement, the vaccine alliance known as Gavi said that 60 countries are affected by the delays.
In vaccination tents set up at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, many of those who arrived for their first jabs were uneasy about when the second would arrive.
“My fear if I don’t get the second dose, my immune system is going to be weak, hence I might die,” said Oscar Odinga, a civil servant.
Internal WHO documents obtained by AP show the uncertainty about deliveries “is causing some countries to lose faith in the Covax (effort).” That is prompting WHO to consider speeding up its endorsement of vaccines from China and Russia, which have not been authorised by any regulators in Europe or North America.
The WHO documents show the UN agency is facing questions from Covax participants about allotments in addition to “uncertainty about whether all those who were vaccinated in round one are guaranteed a second dose.”
WHO declined to respond specifically to the issues raised in the internal materials but has previously said countries are “very keen” to get vaccines as soon as possible and insisted it hasn’t heard any complaints about the process.
WHO said last month it might be possible to greenlight the Chinese vaccines by the end of April.
Some experts have noted that Sinopharm and Sinovac, two Chinese-made vaccines, lack published data, and there are reports of people needing a third dose to be protected.
“If there is something that we miss from not having thoroughly evaluated the risks of serious adverse events from these vaccines, that would undermine the confidence in all the good products that we’re using that we know are safe,” said Dora Curry, director of health equity and rights at CARE International.
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Other experts worried that delays could erode faith in governments that were particularly efficient in their vaccination programmes and were counting on second doses soon.
“In the absence of high vaccination coverage globally, we risk dragging out the pandemic for several more years,” said Lavanya Vasudevan, an assistant professor at Duke University’s Global Health Institute. “Every day that the virus is in circulation is an opportunity for it to mutate into a more deadly variant.”
Earlier this month, the WHO appealed to rich countries to urgently share 10 million doses to meet the UN target of starting Covid-19 vaccinations in every country within the first 100 days of the year. So far, countries have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to Covax. But there are simply no doses to buy, and no country has agreed to immediately share what it has.
Bilateral donations of doses tend to go along political lines, rather than to countries with the most infections, and they aren’t nearly enough to compensate for the goals that Covax has set out. Think Global Health, a data site managed by the Council on Foreign Relations, identified 19 countries that have donated a total of 27.5 million doses to 102 nations as of Thursday.
According to the International Rescue Committee, virus cases and deaths last month surged in numerous crisis-hit countries: by 322 per cent in Kenya, 379 per cent in Yemen and 529 per cent in northeast Syria.
On Thursday, the agencies behind Covax – WHO, vaccines alliance Gavi and CEPI, a coalition for epidemic preparedness – celebrated their delivery of 38 million life-saving vaccines to more than 100 countries.
Brook Baker, a vaccines expert at Northeastern University, said the laudatory message was misplaced.
“Celebrating doses sufficient for only 19 million people, or 0.25 per cent of global population, is tone deaf,” he said, adding it was time for WHO and partners to be more honest with countries.
“WHO and Gavi have repeatedly overpromised and underdelivered, so why should we believe that they will suddenly be able to ramp up production and deliveries in a couple of months?” he said.
Outside the vaccination tents in Nairobi on Thursday, Dr Duncan Nyukuri, an infectious disease doctor, tried to reassure people getting their first dose.
“If you receive the first dose and you fail to receive the second dose, this does not mean that your body will be any weaker or you will be at an increased risk of getting any infection,” he said. “What it means is your body will have developed some immunity against the coronavirus infection. But this immunity is not as good as somebody who has received both doses.”