The coronavirus disease (Covid-19) has infected 57.9 million people worldwide and 1.37 million have lost their lives on Saturday, according to real-time statistics provider Worldometer. Many have pinned their hopes on vaccines as reports come in of two of them, including Pfizer and Moderna candidates, that they are highly effective and others that pass the advanced stages of trials.
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Experts have highlighted several looming concerns as the world seeks to devise a fair system for distributing vaccines once they are available.
The rush to buy in advance
Pfizer and BioNTech’s candidate vaccine BNT162b2 was recently found to be 95% effective with no major safety concerns, and Moderna announced that preliminary data from phase three of the trial showed its vaccine was 94.5% effective.
Although none of these vaccines have been approved yet, countries are buying doses in advance. According to Duke University in North Carolina, 6.4 billion doses of potential vaccines have already been purchased and another 3.2 billion are under negotiation or reserved as “optional expansions of existing deals,” the BBC reported.
When can countries expect a vaccine that works?
Clare Wenham, assistant professor of global health policy at the London School of Economics, told the BBC that any country that can pay more in the early stages of vaccine production would come to the front of the line and the “vast majority” of the vaccine doses. that have been bought so far have been by high-income countries.
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While the Serum Institute of India has said it will keep half of all doses it produces for domestic distribution, Indonesia is partnering with Chinese vaccine developers and Brazil is partnering with trials conducted by the University of Oxford and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. .
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “equitable distribution is particularly important in the area of vaccines which, if used correctly and equitably, could help stop the acute phase of the pandemic and allow reconstruction of our societies and economies. “
Pfizer has said it expects to produce up to 50 million doses in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021 and Moderna has also shown promising results. The Moderna vaccine also has fewer requirements to keep it cold, which has been a concern for poorer countries, particularly in warmer areas.
WHO Equitable Vaccine Distribution Plan
A landmark WHO global vaccine plan known as Covax seeks to ensure equitable distribution of future coronavirus vaccines. “Once a vaccine is shown to be safe and effective, and its use is authorized, all countries receive doses in proportion to their population size, although initially in small quantities. This will allow all countries to begin by immunizing the highest priority populations, “advises WHO.
“In the second phase, vaccines would continue to be deployed in all countries so that additional populations can be covered according to national priorities,” adds the organization.
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