Nearly 250 million vaccines can go to waste

President of the United States, Joe Biden, Will lead a summit this Wednesday (22) in which he will ask world leaders to pledge to vaccinate 70% of the world’s population by Govt by September next year.

But research shows that rich countries still have more vaccines, most of which will soon be wasted, and some countries have not yet vaccinated even 2% of their population.

Bahar, who left for Iran a few months ago, was excited to see his father for the first time in four years.

She doesn’t know it Corona virus He was about to destroy the country and his family in the second deadly wave. The family friend, who died first, was preparing for his son’s wedding when he fell ill.

Then came her paternal uncle and an elderly aunt. Pahar was so worried about her grandmother that she only had one dose of vaccine and waited a second time.

Bahar is 20 years old and lives in the United States, where he was vaccinated in April.

Although she knew she was somehow protected, she spent the last days of her trip to Iran at her father’s house, worried about who might be next infected by the virus. Some of his family have been vaccinated because there are some vaccines in Iran.

Soon after returning to the United States, he discovered that his father was ill. She was far away, scared. “It’s like the crime of a survivor,” he says. “Since I got two shots of the Pfizer vaccine, I have left Iran completely fine and completely healthy.” Your father eventually recovered, but many elderly relatives did not. “Knowing that, I really felt guilty.”

This imbalance in the distribution of vaccines creates shocking statistics. More than half of the world has not yet received the Govt-19 vaccine.

According to Human Rights Watch, 75% of Govt vaccines went to ten countries. The Economist Intelligence Unit says that half of all vaccines made so far reach 15% of the world’s population, with rich countries providing 100 times more vaccines than the poor.

In June, G7 members – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States – pledged to donate one billion doses to poor countries next year.

“Agate DeMaris, the leading author and former diplomat of the latest report on global vaccine supply in the Economist Intelligence Unit,” I laughed when I saw it. ““ I saw a lot of it. You know that will never happen. “

The UK has pledged 100 million doses, but has so far donated less than $ 9 million. President Biden has pledged $ 580 million, of which the United States has so far provided $ 140 million. In addition, the EU committee promised a 250 million dose by the end of the year – 8% of which had been shipped.

Like many middle-income countries, Iran has purchased vaccines from Kovacs, a WHO-supported global program to distribute them wherever they need them. Kovacs buys and sells vaccines at low prices to middle-income countries — and donates to poorer countries.

But Kovacs faced a major distribution problem. The project plans to distribute two billion doses by 2021, most of which come from a facility in India, but when a second wave of infections hit India in May, the local government banned exports.

Since then, Kovacs have been donated by rich countries. And the offer is slowly growing. Some recipients do not vaccinate 2% of their population.

“Currently sizes are shared in small quantities, in the shortest possible time and with the best expiration dates – which creates a huge logistics challenge for assigning and delivering them to countries capable of absorbing them,” says Aurelia Nguyen Kovacs Installation.

This is not a global distribution problem. According to Erfiniti, a scientific analysis firm that researches the global distribution of vaccines, rich countries have accumulated surpluses of vaccines. Vaccine manufacturers produce about 1.5 billion doses a month. By the end of the year, they will have produced 11 billion doses.

Matt Linley, chief researcher at Airfinity, said: “They are producing large quantities of the drug, which has grown exponentially over the last three or four months.

The richest countries in the world don’t need a 1.2 billion dose – even if they start managing boosters.

One-fifth of that amount — 241 million vaccines — is at risk of being wasted if not delivered very soon. Poor countries may not be able to get these vaccines at least two months before the expiration date.

“I don’t think rich countries are greedy because they don’t know which vaccines work,” says Linley. “So they had to buy a lot.”

Through its recent research, Airfinity wants to show governments that they already have a good global vaccine and that they do not need to have surplus. Instead, they can donate what they do not need now and promise that more will be produced in the coming months.

“They don’t want to be surprised,” Agate DeMaris said. “It’s about domestic political pressure because a section of the electorate would not want to see donations made if there was a sense that vaccines are still needed domestically.”

The UK government says there is no stock of vaccines and has agreed to share four million doses with Australia, which will be reimbursed from Australia’s own quota by the end of the year.

“Vaccine distribution and distribution is carefully managed in the UK to give everyone the opportunity to be vaccinated themselves,” a Health and Health Department spokesman said.

Aurelia Nuin, from Kovacs, says it is not just governments that need to act. “Manufacturers must live up to their general commitments to Kovacs and give us priority over bilateral agreements with countries that already have sufficient quantities.”

“If global vaccine manufacturers are producing 1.5 billion doses every month, the question you have to ask is, why do the lower levels reach poorer countries? We ordered earlier.

For Bahar and his family, these scales are not just numbers. They are real life, friends and family. Every day, she hears new stories of someone who has died.

When friends at the university said they did not want to be vaccinated, he tried to argue with them. But now she can’t do it. This is very annoying.

“I’m trying to give it up, but it’s very hard to see people not using the privilege within themselves.”