Rich countries have delivered only one in seven doses of COVID-19 vaccines promised to developing countries, an Oxfam report calculates. The international organization denounces a “vaccine apartheid”.
Of the 1.8 billion doses promised by the West, only 261 million have been delivered so far, estimates the analysis titled “a dose of reality”.
Canada has so far delivered only 3.2 million of the 40 million doses announced. The British government provided only 9.6 million of the 100 million doses it had set aside for the poorest nations. The United States, for its part, delivered the largest number of doses – nearly 177 million doses – but this represents only 16% of the 1.1 billion initially planned.
Thus, the COVAX system, which is supposed to redistribute vaccines around the world, is constantly reducing its deliveries.
Pharmaceutical companies have said they want to contribute directly to this dose-sharing system, but their deliveries are still pending. Of the 994 million doses allocated to COVAX by Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech, only 120 million were actually delivered. Johnson & Johnson and Moderna have yet to deliver a single of the promised doses.
Not all vaccine orders placed by the African Union were honored. Johnson & Johnson, for example, only supplied around 11% of the 50 million doses paid for by African countries. The latter have only been able to procure on their own about 100 million doses since the start of the pandemic for a total population of nearly 1.2 billion people.
The waste of doses feeds this injustice, claims the Oxfam report. More than 100 million doses will expire by the end of the year in refrigerators in the West, the organization estimates. Up to 800 million doses could be thrown in the trash by mid-2022.
Vaccination campaigns are slowing down in these countries. More than half of North Americans are now adequately protected against COVID-19, as are 64% of the population of the European Union.
Production delays
The delays in the production of COVID-19 vaccines are also of concern to Oxfam. Its report estimates that the big four vaccine suppliers will only be able to manufacture 83% of the vaccines planned at the start of the year.
These delays are accumulating because “we have ceded control of the vaccine supply to a small number of pharmaceutical companies, which give priority to their own profits,” accuses the Executive Director of Oxfam-Quebec, Denise Byrnes.
His organization advocates that patents and technologies related to these vaccines fall into the public domain. More than a hundred countries including the United States, France and India support this idea. Pharmaceutical companies are contesting this proposal, claiming that it would deter research on new vaccines and would not necessarily increase dose production. “Canada remains ambiguous” on the issue, says Ms. Byrnes.
“As the scientists say, the longer we wait, the more mutations like the Delta variant will appear,” insists Denise Byrnes. “There is an urgent need to act. “
At the United Nations General Assembly in September, United States President Joe Biden set the goal of vaccinating 70% of people in each country by September 2022.