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– As good news continues over efforts to include coronavirus in the US, including an agreed-upon agreement by the Biden government that caught 200 million more doses for Americans, things are not going so well in many parts of the world. In fact, UNICEF says 130 countries need to administer ‘another single dose’ per NPR, leaving 2.5 billion people in the cold, underscoring the huge gap between rich and poor. Among the factors underlying the problem is the lack of enough vaccines to get around, as well as possible problems with current vaccine candidates to combat COVID-19 variants. For example, South Africa switched to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine of the AstraZeneca variety – an easy-to-store, relatively inexpensive vaccine used by low-resource countries because the latter was found to be less effective. is in occurrence COVID caused by the B.1.351 variant currently occurring in South Africa.
The medicine manufacturer Moderna sold most of its initial vaccine supply to richer countries Washington Post, and other companies follow suit, leaving poorer countries desperate for any vaccine, not even as effective. The World Health Organization projects that these struggling countries will not have wide access to the vaccine until late 2022 or even 2023 USA Today. To help the countries, the WHO helped launch COVAX, a vaccination program that seeks to ensure that the poorer countries in the world have 20% of their population (mainly older people and health workers) vaccinated by the end of the year. “In this way you avoid what … would be an unethical and unscrupulous thing,” says a South African doctor. And also a dangerous thing, says Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome charity, to Euronews: “Vaccinating many people in some countries and leaving the virus unnoticed in large parts of the world will lead to more variants arise. ” (Read more stories about coronavirus vaccines.)