LONDON (AP) – Up to 60 countries, including some of the world’s poorest, could be blocked from the first coronavirus vaccinations, as almost all deliveries through the global program to help them are blocked by the end of the month June.
COVAX, the global initiative to provide vaccines to countries without the influence of negotiating for low supplies alone, has sent more than 25,000 doses to low-income countries in the last week only twice a day. Deliveries stopped almost Monday.
In the last two weeks, according to data compiled daily by UNICEF, less than 2 million doses of COVAX in total have been eliminated to be shipped to 92 countries in the developing world – the same amount injected in the UK alone.
On Friday, the head of the World Health Organization criticized the “shocking imbalance” of global COVID-19 vaccination. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus said that while one in four people in rich countries received a vaccine, only one in 500 people in poorer countries received a dose.
The lack of the vaccine comes mainly from India’s decision to stop the export of vaccines from the Serum Institute factory, which produces the vast majority of doses of AstraZeneca that COVAX relied on to supply about a third of the global population at some point as the coronavirus grows worldwide.
COVAX will only deliver vaccines authorized by the WHO, and countries are increasingly impatient. Supplies are declining in some of the first countries to receive COVAX shipments, and the expected delivery of the second dose in the currently recommended 12-week window is now questionable. In a statement, the vaccine alliance known as GAVI told The Associated Press that 60 countries are affected by the delays.
In the vaccination tents set up at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, many of those who arrived for their first shots were worried when the second one arrives.
“My fear is that if I don’t get the second dose, my immune system will be weak, so I might die,” said Oscar Odinga, a civil servant.
The WHO’s internal documents obtained by the PA show the uncertainty regarding deliveries “causes some countries to lose confidence in COVAX (effort)”. This leads the WHO to consider accelerating the approval of vaccines in China and Russia, which have not been authorized by any regulatory body in Europe or North America.
WHO documents show that the UN agency is facing questions from COVAX participants about allocations, in addition to “uncertainty as to whether all those who have been vaccinated in round 1 are guaranteed a second dose”.
The WHO refused to respond specifically to the problems raised in domestic materials, but previously said countries were “very keen” to receive vaccines as soon as possible and insisted that it had not heard any complaints about the process.
Concern about AstraZeneca shooting and rare blood clots It also “created nervousness about its safety and effectiveness,” the WHO noted. Among its proposed solutions is the decision to “speed up the review of additional products” in China and Russia.
The WHO said last month that it could be possible for Chinese vaccines to be given by the end of April.
Some experts have noted that Sinopharm and Sinovac, two vaccines made in China, have no published data and there are reports of people needing a third dose to be protected.
“If we are missing something that we have not thoroughly assessed the risks of serious adverse events from these vaccines, it would undermine confidence in all the good products we use that we know are safe,” said Dora Curry, director of equity and health rights at CARE International.
Other experts feared that delays could erode faith in governments that have been particularly effective in their vaccination programs. and were soon relying on the second dose.
“In the absence of high global vaccine coverage, we risk a pandemic for a few more years,” said Lavanya Vasudevan, an assistant professor at Duke University’s Global Institute of Health. “Every day the virus is circulating is an opportunity for it to move to a more deadly version.”
Earlier this month, the WHO called on rich countries to urgently deliver 10 million doses to meet the UN goal of starting COVID-19 vaccinations in each country in the first 100 days of the year. To date, 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 dose donations tend to be political, rather than in the countries with the most infections and are not nearly enough to offset the goals set by COVAX. Think about global health, a data site run by the Foreign Relations Council, identified 19 countries that donated a total of 27.5 million doses to 102 nations as of Thursday.
“You can make a strong argument that it is better to make donations in crisis and control the pandemic than to vaccinate low-risk groups at home,” said Thomas Bollyky, director of the Council’s Global Health Program’s Global Health Program. Bollyky said COVAX was both a big disappointment and the only option available to most of the world.
According to the International Rescue Committee, COVID-19 cases and deaths rose last month in many countries affected by the crisis: 322% in Kenya, 379% in Yemen and 529% in northeastern Syria.
On Thursday, the agencies behind COVAX – WHO, the GAVI and CEPI vaccine alliance, a coalition to prepare for the epidemic – celebrated the delivery of 38 million life-saving vaccines in more than 100 countries.
Brook Baker, a vaccine expert at Northeastern University, said the message of praise was out of place.
“Celebrating enough doses for just 19 million people, or 0.25% of the global population, is deaf,” he said, adding that it was time for WHO and partners to be more honest with countries.
“WHO and GAVI have repeatedly over-promised and under-deliberated, so why should we believe that they will be able to suddenly increase production and deliveries in a few months?” he said.
On Thursday, outside the vaccination tents in Nairobi, Dr. Duncan Nyukuri, a doctor for infectious diseases, tried to reassure those receiving the first dose.
“If you get the first dose and fail to get the second dose, that doesn’t mean your body will be weaker or that you will be at increased risk of becoming infected,” he said. “Which means your body will develop a certain immunity against coronavirus infection. But this immunity is not as good as someone who has received both doses. ”
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Hinnant reported from Paris. Khaled Kazziha from Nairobi, Kenya, contributed.
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