Ghana has just received its first Covid-19 vaccine doses from Covax, the global initiative created to ensure that all countries have access to vaccines.
A sum total of 600,000 doses of Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine arrived in Ghana’s capital, Accra, on Wednesday. This is the official start of a long worldwide vaccination campaign.
Ghana is the first country to receive these vaccines. It will begin next week with the onset of frontline health workers, the elderly and people with underlying conditions. However, the 600,000 doses will cover only a fraction of the approximately 30 million people in Ghana.
The Accra bundle is the first to be shipped and delivered by the COVAX facility in Africa as part of an unprecedented effort to deliver at least 2 billion doses # COVID-19 vaccines by the end of 2021 – which will be the largest vaccine procurement and supply operation in history. pic.twitter.com/psIFnKYlPc
– World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) 24 February 2021
Côte d’Ivoire will receive the vaccine doses from Covax. But immunization campaigns in Africa have only just begun, after millions and millions of shots were fired in richer countries.
Covax, led by the World Health Organization, GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, is designed to guarantee equitable vaccine access to every country, regardless of wealth. At present, the initiative aims to deliver 2 billion vaccine doses by 2021, most of which will go to 92 of the poorest countries in the world.
But the initiative is slow to implement, especially as it fights prosperous countries for vaccination.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, said this week that more than 210 million doses of vaccine have been distributed in just two countries, while more than 200 countries have not started giving their first doses.
Rich countries – with more than 14 percent of the world population – have bought more than 53 percent of the vaccines that are likely to be successful through pre-purchase agreements. At the moment, the demand for the vaccines is greater than the supply, so even these rich countries cannot get gunshots fast enough. But they are likely to be able to do so within a few months – for example in the summer in the US – compared to some of the poorest countries in the world, where it can take years.
Many countries in Africa have not experienced the dramatic increases in Covid-19 seen in other parts of the world. But a year into the pandemic, some of the 54 countries on the continent are facing an increase in cases, fueled by new variants, including one discovered in South Africa. This week, the entire continent of Africa reached 100,000 known Covid-19 deaths.
Despite this, only a handful of African countries even started vaccinations. According to the African Union, it will require 1.5 billion vaccine doses to vaccinate 60 percent of the more than 1 billion people on the continent. Although the African Union and countries are trying to work out deals – including with Russia and China – many countries will need help from Covax.
The United States recently dedicated a major $ 4 billion boost to Covax to help fund and deliver vaccines. But if rich countries continue to stockpile vaccine, the rate of vaccination in the worlds less affluent countries will still be slow.
Apart from funding, global vaccination efforts only need more vaccine supplies, coupled with efforts to increase production and production capacity in lower-income countries and to force pharmaceutical companies to abandon intellectual property rights to share better knowledge and technology.
Getting the whole world vaccinated is going to take a lot of effort. It is not just a moral requirement to guarantee that the entire world’s population has access to protective vaccinations; it is a necessity for public health. The coronavirus that is spreading in one corner of the world will still be a threat to everyone, especially as new variants emerge.