In an interconnected world, a pandemic can be overcome only when it is overcome everywhere – no one is safe until everyone is safe. Vaccination delays and supply shortages in protective equipment and treatments increase the possibility of the virus mutating. This undermines our ability to control the pandemic, even in highly vaccinated countries. And yet two years into the pandemic, vaccine doses are highly concentrated in rich countries.
As of October 2021, only 0.7% of all manufactured vaccine doses had gone to low-income countries. Manufacturers had delivered 47 times as many doses to high-income countries as they had to low-income countries.
Since its inception, COVAX, the UN-backed initiative dedicated to promoting access to Covid vaccines, has struggled to obtain doses. It recently passed the 1 billion doses delivered – half way to its goal of delivering 2 billion doses by the end of 2021. Indeed, AstraZeneca, Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson have delivered between 0% and 39% of their already inadequate commitments to COVAX in 2021.
