The Rich Countries Come First

 COVAX, was an international system to share coronavirus vaccines which were supposed to guarantee that low and middle-income countries could get doses without being last in line and at the mercy of unreliable donations.  So far, the initiative has delivered less than 10% of the doses it promised.

It hasn’t worked out that way. 

In late June alone, the initiative known as COVAX sent some 530,000 doses to Britain – more than double the amount sent that month to the entire continent of Africa. Britain, tapped into the meager supply of COVAX doses, despite being among the countries that had reserved most of the world’s available vaccines. Other wealthy nations that recently received paid doses through COVAX include Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, all of which have relatively high immunization rates and other means of acquiring vaccines. Canada, Australia and New Zealand did as well. Canada got so much criticism for taking COVAX shipments that it said it would not request additional ones.

In the meantime, billions of people in poor countries have yet to receive a single dose.

The result is that poorer countries have landed in exactly the predicament COVAX was supposed to avoid: dependent on the whims and politics of rich countries for donations, just as they have been so often in the past. And in many cases, rich countries don’t want to donate significant amounts before they finish vaccinating all their citizens who could possibly want a dose, a process that is still playing out.

“If we had tried to withhold vaccines from parts of the world, could we have made it any worse than it is today?” asked Dr. Bruce Aylward, a senior advisor at the World Health Organization.

Brook Baker, a Northeastern University law professor who specializes in access to medicines, said it was unconscionable that rich countries would dip into COVAX vaccine supplies when more than 90 developing countries had virtually no access. The program is now trying to regain credibility by getting rich countries to distribute their donated vaccines through its own system, Baker said. But even this effort is not entirely successful because some countries are making their own deals to curry favorable publicity and political clout. “Rich countries are trying to garner geopolitical benefits from bilateral dose-sharing,” 

In the meantime, Venezuela has yet to receive any of its doses allocated by COVAX. Haiti has received less than half of what it was allocated, Syria about a tenth. 

Dr. Christian Happi, an infectious diseases expert at Nigeria’s Redeemer’s University, said donations from rich countries are both insufficient and unreliable, especially as they have not only taken most of the world’s supplies but are moving on to vaccinate children and considering administering booster shots.

“If the donors are not stepping forward, the people who continue to die are our people,” Strive Masiyiwa, the African Union special envoy on COVID-19 vaccine procurement, said.

Rich nations dip into COVAX supply while poor wait for shots (apnews.com)