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This suggests an article published in the British Medical Journal and based on data from humanitarian aid organizations. Despite representing only 14% of the world’s population, they bought 53% of the doses of the most promising vaccines.
They say that crises make inequities greater and coronavirus vaccination seems to be no exception. According to a study carried out by an alliance of humanitarian aid organizations, including Amnesty International, Oxfam, Frontline AIDS and Global Justice Now, the countries with more resources would be hoarding vaccines against the coronavirus. In fact, the People Vaccine Alliance, the name of the group in English, warns that “at least 90% from 67 low-income countries ” They don’t have much chance of getting vaccinated in 2021, as the most financially powerful countries have booked more vaccines than they need.
The alliance statement was taken up and endorsed by the British medical journal, one of the most prestigious magazines in the world. There they point out that, although rich countries only represent the 14% of the world’s population have bought up to 53% of the doses of the eight most promising vaccines. Among them, all the vaccines that the Moderna company is expected to produce next year, as well as 96% of the vaccine doses from Pfizer and BioNTech. (Read: The United States, through the FDA, authorizes Pfizer’s vaccine against coronavirus)
“The University of Oxford and AstraZeneca have committed to distributing 64% of their vaccine in developing countries, but in the best of cases this will reach only 18% of the world’s population next year,” says the alliance. .
One of the reasons why this inequity in distribution occurs is because many of these vaccines have been developed with funding from certain governments, which generates two problems: that rights of exclusivity and that pharmaceutical companies keep their technology secret in order to profit more. The alliance estimates that AstraZeneca-Oxford, Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have received more than $ 5 billion in public funds to develop their vaccines.
Given this scenario, the magazine comments, the alliance of manufacturers’ organizations to share their intellectual property with the group for access to covid-19 technology of the World Health Organization (WHO).
The study also notes that 67 low-income countries, so far, have not made any purchases from the eight companies that are leading the way in creating vaccines against the coronavirus and that have received public funds (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca-Oxford, Novavax, Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi-GSK, Gamaleya-Sputnik and Sinovac). These countries, instead, have put all their hope in the COVAX program, which seeks to distribute vaccines more equitably. However, the program has only secured 700 million doses, a figure that is barely enough to immunize 10% of the population of these 67 countries. (The: Uneven Vaccine Distribution May Damage The Global Fight Against COVID-19)
The data obtained by the alliance assures that Canada is the one that would be hoarding the most vaccines, so much so that it reserved the equivalent so that each citizen could be immunized five times. It is followed by the United States, with four immunizations per person and the United Kingdom, with three.
