In the world’s vaccination race against Covid-19, developing countries are in danger because the mutations in the virus make recovery difficult – a situation that could lead to at least another year of humanitarian and economic misery for poor nations.
The US has now administered vaccine doses to about 12% of its population, while Europe has reached about 5%. But in South America, only 1.8% of the population had received a vaccine by this week, while Asia reached 1.5% and Africa 0.1%, according to Our World in Data, a project based at the University Oxford.
Nearly 130 countries need a single dose, the World Health Organization recently said. Only two countries in sub-Saharan Africa – Seychelles and Mauritius – have started vaccinating a substantial proportion of front-line workers, although others will fire in the coming days.
The extremely short supply of vaccines for poorer countries risks being further reduced by the emergence of new variants of the virus, including in South Africa and Brazil, which appear to make some of the vaccines that have been provided less effective. Large areas of Africa and some Latin American and Asian countries are unlikely to cover the majority of their population before 2023 or 2024, experts say.
All of this means that it could be years before life returns to normal in poorer countries, which saw more than 100 million people fall into extreme poverty again last year and lack the resources to unleash government spending as well. much like rich countries. Some emerging market countries that managed to promote domestic stimulus last year no longer have the resources to continue.