The World Health Organisation (WHO) has urged nations producing coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccines not to distribute them unilaterally but to donate them to the global Covax scheme to ensure fairness.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the plea as China hashes out agreements across Africa, Russia distributes shots in Latin America and the European Union eyes giving vaccines to poorer countries, all outside of the Covax facility.
Tedros said nations striking one-on-one deals undermine Covax’s goal of equitable access, adding that the WHO’s scheme can even accommodate requests from governments that “prefer to give their donations to certain countries, because they are their neighbours or because they have some relationship”.
“What we can do, if that comes through Covax, is the earmarked donation can go to those countries and the Covax stocks can go to other countries,” Tedros said during a virtual press conference from Geneva. “So we can strike a balance.”
Covax, also backed by Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi the Vaccine Alliance, is due to ship small volumes of vaccines from AstraZeneca and Pfizer, even as wealthier countries have snapped up most Western doses.
Meanwhile, vaccine diplomacy is ascendant, with Russia talking with Croatia over deliveries while the first shipments of its Sputnik V shots are bound for Mexico.
In recent weeks, China has also offered hundreds of thousands of doses to Namibia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Guinea.
The European Union is working on its own vaccine-sharing mechanism, potentially undercutting the WHO’s push.
WHO adviser Bruce Aylward said wealthier EU countries and Canada had approached Covax about sharing doses, though so far without result.
“There was a lot of interest,” Aylward, also speaking at yesterday’s press conference, said. “Unfortunately, we have not seen yet the translation of that interest ... to (vaccination donations) to Covax.”
The WHO has also urged Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers to make good on their commitments as the planet’s poorest countries await their first doses.
Tedros said the Covax facility was now ready to begin.
Around 336mn AstraZeneca-Oxford doses and 1.2mn Pfizer-BioNTech doses – the only two vaccines with WHO approval – are set to start being shipped out later this month through Covax.
“At the beginning of the year I issued a call to action to ensure that vaccination of health workers was under way in all countries within the first 100 days of the year,” Tedros said.
Today “marks the half-way point, and we have made progress, but we are not there yet. With the emergency use listing of two versions of the AstraZeneca vaccine this week, Covax is ready to roll out vaccines and is waiting for several manufacturers to make good on their commitments”, he said, without elaborating.
On Monday, the WHO gave the seal of approval to the AstraZeneca vaccine that is being manufactured in plants in India and South Korea, meaning it can now be shipped out via Covax.
The facility is set to issue its final distribution list for the first wave of deliveries next week.
The first doses will be delivered by the end of February, with the bulk in March.
Around 145 economies are set to receive enough doses to immunise 3.3% of their collective population by mid-2021.
During his news conference, Tedros noted that countries in Europe – which have been striking their own deals with manufacturers – were aiming to vaccinate 70% of their populations in a similar same time frame.
Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Keith Rowley, chairman of CARICOM, the 15-member Caribbean Community, voiced fears that small states, lacking bargaining power, would be shut out of the global vaccination drive.
“As there is the understandable rush to receive the vaccines and inoculation of our various populations, we are more than a little bit concerned that there is, or is to be, hoarding and price-gouging as well as undue preference in some quarters,” Rowley told the WHO press conference, via video-link.
“We are all yoked to an invisible destroyer. It is my hope and plea that ... on this occasion, the rich take care of the poor.
“All we ask as members of the family of nations is that we not be forgotten, ignored – or worse, taken advantage of in this business of life and death.”
The WHO launched its annual Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan for 2021 yesterday, saying that $1.96bn was needed to fund another year of battling the pandemic.
The plan’s six objectives are to suppress transmission; reduce exposure; counter misinformation; protect the vulnerable; reduce death and illness; and accelerate equitable access to vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics.
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