The Biden administration has officially committed to Covax, the global effort to fund and deliver Covid-19 vaccines around the world, including to lower-income countries.
The administration will commit $ 4 billion to Covax and immediately release the first $ 2 billion to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which is one of the partners in this effort, along with the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). Another $ 2 billion will follow over the next two years, an effort to encourage other countries to contribute more money.
The announcement comes during President Joe Biden’s attendance at the Group of Seven (G7) meeting of the world’s largest economies, where the pandemic is at the top of the agenda and where others, including the United Kingdom, have made similar commitments to help global vaccination . attempts.
The Biden administration has announced last month that it would join Covax, another example of the greater commitment to international cooperation of the White House. President Donald Trump has refused to join, one of several notable outcomes in an initiative now involving more than 190 countries.
However, Congress set aside $ 4 billion for Gavi in his spending bill in December, which is the money Biden is using for this announcement.
The US announcement also comes on the heels of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson promising to donate the UK’s surplus vaccines. Also the President of the European Commission (the executive branch of the European Union) Said Friday that the EU doubles its Covax contribution to $ 1 billion.
All of these commitments are welcome news, and will compensate for the actual funding shortfalls in the purchase of vaccine doses. At the same time, many of these affluent countries are also rushing to vaccinate their own people, insuring their citizens doses at all costs and buying far more doses than they need, while the rest of the world, especially lower-income countries, remain many far behind.
About a quarter of the world’s population, mostly in low- and middle-income countries, may not have access to vaccinations until 2022 – a dire situation that could offer new variants the chance to spread the pandemic for all.
This is a good first step, but “vaccine nationalism” is still the order of the day
The COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility, or Covax, is designed as a financing tool to ensure that all countries – rich and less rich – have equitable access to a vaccine. Higher-income countries contribute to the fund, pooling their resources to invest in different vaccine candidates and finance free vaccine doses in 92 low-income countries.
The advantage for higher and middle income countries is that they increase their chances of getting a successful vaccine; these joint investments would also ideally reduce the doses. And of course, priority groups such as health workers and the elderly will have early access to the vaccine in lower-income countries, alleviating the worst toll of the pandemic.
The idea was born out of the lessons learned from the 2009 swine flu pandemic, when rich countries bought up all the vaccines and immunized their populations, and only then donated to other countries, at which point the worst of the pandemic succeeded.
A version of this is now taking place, on a more dramatic scale. In January, more than 80 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine were distributed worldwide, while only 55 doses went to people in low-income countries. The rate has since increased, but vaccinations have only begun in 87 countries, most of which take place in higher- and middle-income countries.
Although many rich countries joined Covax and pledged funds, most still entered into individual pre-purchase agreements with pharmaceutical companies to bet on promising vaccines and secure their own doses.
Rich countries – with 14 percent of the world population – have bought more than 53 percent of the vaccines that are likely to be successful. According to an analysis by a ONE campaign, an international group against poverty, the United States is estimated to have approximately 453 million doses of vaccine against Covid-19, or what remains after each person in the US has had at least two shots.
But that does not mean that the US or any other country has millions of doses just hanging around; at the moment the demand is still greater than the supply. Richer countries are at the top of the list because of these procurement agreements, and their ability to make large purchases can also increase the cost of dosing.
All this has meant that lower-income countries are struggling to even start vaccination if they have started at all. Covax has set a goal of delivering two billion vaccines to poor countries by 2021, with deliveries in the first quarter of this year, most of which will begin in March.
According to an estimate by the Economist Intelligence Unit, some lower-income countries will not really be able to achieve the vaccination by about 2023. In the United States, by comparison, it might be this summer.
Additional funds for Covax are important as they will enable Covax to enter into more agreements with vaccine manufacturers and deliver more doses. But as Julia Belluz of Vox reported last month, bilateral vaccine trade has already undermined Covax.
Rich countries “want it both ways,” Lawrence Gostin, global professor of health law in Georgetown, told Belluz. “They join Covax so they can declare themselves good citizens of the world and at the same time rob Covax of his lifeblood, these are doses of vaccinations.”
The United Nations has called on richer countries to donate vaccine supplies, but except Norway, few have said they would do so while still trying to vaccinate populations at home. The UK has said it will donate a surplus but does not give a timeline. According to CNN, the Biden government wants to donate doses as soon as ‘sufficient supplies are in the US’.
French President Emmanuel Macron said in a recent interview with the Financial Times that the EU and the US should set aside 5 percent of their current Covid-19 vaccine supply and “bring it to poorer countries very quickly so that people on the soil can see it happen. ”
But not the EU – which has recently taken dramatic steps to try to get more vaccine doses for its own struggling campaign – or the US seems ready to take those steps, despite rivals such as China and Russia showing a “vaccine diplomacy” through their own doses to countries in Africa and Latin America.
In addition to delivering doses, rich countries can also do more to build production and production capacity in lower-income countries and to put pressure on pharmaceutical companies to abandon possible intellectual property rights to better knowledge and technology. Share.
The United States and its allies who place leadership and money behind such efforts are a necessity for public health. The world cannot recover from the pandemic or economic crisis it has created unless the rest of the world, along with richer countries, comes closer to herd immunity.
The United States and its partners making greater commitments to Covax and other global vaccine efforts are an important and significant step toward these efforts. But this is only the first.