LAGOS – The development and approval of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines less than a year after the start of the pandemic is a truly remarkable achievement, offering hope that the end of this devastating crisis may be in sight. What follows in the coming months – or even weeks – will be equally astonishing: COVID-19 vaccines will be available to people all over the world – not just in the richest countries – at the same time more or less.
Vaccines will reach most citizens of rich countries in the first quarter of this year, and citizens of low- and middle-income countries will also begin to access them. The speed and scale at which vaccines are being delivered is astounding and necessary to end the pandemic, and is only possible thanks to an unprecedented show of global unity and multilateral support COVAX, the central mechanism in the global COVID-19 vaccination effort, launched last year by the World Health Organization and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (which I led).
COVAX will facilitate the introduction of two billion vaccine doses over the next year, reaching people in 190 participating countries and economies, regardless of their ability to pay. In fact, there should be enough doses to protect all health and social care workers worldwide by mid-2021. And despite meeting its share of callers, the program has continued to attract more governments, economic policy makers, and vaccine manufacturers. These participants sign on because they recognize that COVAX is the only viable global solution to the COVID-19 crisis.
Now that we have reached this critical point, speculation as to whether COVAX will fail must come to an end. It’s time to start providing the support needed to make sure it does what it was designed to do. The development and approval of vaccines is only the first step. As long as the coronavirus is transmitted between humans, many will continue to be infected, and some will die. The hope of returning to normal commerce, commerce and travel will continue to be hard to earn.
To end the cycle, we can only vaccinate some people in some countries; we must protect everyone everywhere. Yet, with the introduction of vaccines, it seems that demand has still outweighed the limited supply. Under these conditions, even if doses are promised for the rest of the world further down the line, allocating vaccines to the highest bidder will only prolong the crisis. Vaccine nationalism is exactly the problem COVAX was created to solve.
In tackling COVID-19, we must avoid repeating in 2009, when a small number of rich countries bought most of the global supply of H1N1 flu vaccine, leaving the rest of the world without not. Given that each national government has a first-order duty to protect its own citizens, it is not surprising that some 35 countries have already reached a bilateral agreement with pharmaceutical manufacturers for COVID-19 vaccines.
These arrangements are not ideal for the global vaccination effort. Although COVAX is flexible enough to work around this particular problem, it is only as long as manufacturers provide it with the same access to vaccines as national governments accept. Unfortunately, we are already seeing some governments buying far more doses than they need, adding to the pressure on global supply during this critical initial period.
Some of these countries have indicated that they will be giving up their orders, in which case these additional doses will need to be redirected as quickly and fairly as possible. The best way to ensure that they are, is for donor governments to go through the Gavi / COVAX Advance Market Commitment (COVAX) mechanism, which was created to make COVID-19 vaccines available to people living in the low 92 world and middle-income countries.
To date, COVAX has secured about a billion doses for people in these countries, by striking deals with manufacturers of several of the most promising vaccine candidates. But many more doses are needed. All manufacturers must step up and make their vaccines available and affordable to COVAX, so that they can be rolled out globally in a timely manner. Some manufacturers have already done this; and international donors have contributed the $ 2 billion that AMC COVAX needed for 2020. But the program needs an additional $ 5 billion for 2021, and in December, the United States allocated $ 4 billion for Gavi in his second COVID-19 release kit.
Back in February, few imagined that we would have more than one approved vaccine by the end of the year and that we would be in a position to distribute doses to high and lower income countries at the same time. But the global community rallied and created a platform for doing just that. All the needs of COVAX now have enough international support to finish the job.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2021.
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