Image source,EPA
Pfizer has agreed to sell the vaccine to the United States at a “no profit” price. Biden said the donated vaccines will be shipped to nearly 100 low- and middle-income countries starting in August.
The United States has publicly pledged to donate 500 million doses of Pfizer’s (BioNTech) new crown vaccine to assist many poor countries, especially the latter are struggling to vaccinate their citizens.
US President Joe Biden said in a speech at the G7 summit in the UK on Thursday (June 10) that the US donation plan will be “the largest purchase and donation plan for the new crown vaccine in the history of the world.”
He also vowed that the United States will become a “vaccine bank against the new crown virus.”
Biden also emphasized that the United States will donate unconditionally, will not exert pressure and demand returns, and will not have any additional terms.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, who spoke side by side with Biden, went on to speak and said that he could see “the light at the end of the tunnel.”
500 million vaccine sounds like a lot-but how effective can it be?
What did the United States promise?
Pfizer has agreed to sell the vaccine to the United States at a “no profit” price. Biden said that the donated vaccine “will begin shipping to nearly 100 low- and middle-income countries in August.”
It is understood that 200 million doses will be delivered by the end of this year, and another 300 million doses of vaccine will be distributed by June 2022.
This program will be provided to countries around the world through the Covax International Vaccine Sharing Program and a project implemented by the African Union. The program aims to vaccinate the most vulnerable 20% of the world‘s population.
The United States has previously pledged to provide 80 million doses of vaccine to the world. In addition, the latest US donation plan this time is also far larger than the number of donations promised by other countries so far.
Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, Director of African Affairs at the World Health Organization (WHO), said the US donation “is an important step forward.”
Image source,Getty Images
President Biden is attending the G7 leaders meeting in the UK.
Some other G7 countries have also begun to indicate that they will donate more new crown vaccines. In addition to the United States, the G7 members include the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Canada.
At a summit hosted by the Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunization (Gavi) in early June, it was announced that so far, countries have shared more than 132 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine.
These include the donations of more than 54 million doses of vaccines from Belgium, Denmark and Japan, as well as additional vaccine supplies from Spain and Sweden, which can be used for short-term anti-epidemic purposes. It is expected that more countries will pledge to donate vaccines at this G7 summit.
Are the existing vaccine donations enough?
The challenge of vaccination is huge, and the global demand for vaccines is urgent.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “Before September, at least 10% of the population in each country must be vaccinated, so we need an additional 250 million doses of vaccine.”
He said that 100 million doses will be needed in June and July this year. “The sharing of vaccines is now vital to ending the pandemic.”
In February of this year, Covax has indeed ensured that 1.3 billion doses of vaccine will be delivered to poorer countries this year, and it is expected to be delivered gradually in the next few months.
The initial goal of the International Vaccine Sharing Program was to distribute 2 billion doses of vaccine globally by the end of the year. But now the revised goal is to deliver 1.8 billion doses of vaccine to 92 low-income economies around the world by early 2022.
Professor Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert at Baylor College of Medicine in the United States, explained this challenge on Twitter, emphasizing that “we urgently need American foreign policy and leadership to meet this challenge.”
However, the United States’ commitments this time are actually far below the 11 billion doses of vaccines estimated by WHO to reach the global vaccination rate of 70%. Only by reaching this initial target can the spread of the new coronavirus be effectively controlled. .
“The world urgently needs a new vaccine production plan, which can produce billions of additional doses of vaccine within a year. The number of vaccine purchases pledged by countries is far from enough,” Mebaduk, director of drug sharing, NGO Global Citizen (Peter Maybarduk) also said on Twitter.
Niko Lusiani of Oxfam in the United States explained that the dose donated by the United States this time is gratifying, but “compared to current demand is still a drop in the bucket.”
What hinders the development of vaccines?
One of the main challenges is the delivery of vaccines.
As of June 8, the Covax program has sent only 81 million doses of vaccine to 129 member states around the world. This is in stark contrast to the US alone having more than 300 million doses of vaccine, but it also means that countries in the world that rely on the Covax program are far behind.
In fact, the Covax plan primarily relied on the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine produced in India. However, after India was recently hit by the second wave of the outbreak, India stopped all major vaccine exports. Therefore, the vaccine supply from March to May of this year was severely hit.
Before Covax, India’s largest manufacturer, Serum Institute of India (SII), ordered approximately 1.1 billion doses of Covishield (AstraZeneca) vaccine. But so far, the company has only supplied 30 million doses of vaccine to the Covax program, of which nearly 190 million doses have been shelved, and it is still working to increase production.
The company said exports will resume before the end of the year, and the company is focusing on meeting India’s own vaccination needs.
Image source,EPA
In fact, the Covax plan primarily relied on the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine produced in India.
Some countries have problems with slow delivery and distribution of vaccines that have already been obtained. For example, some African countries cannot get all the vaccines before the expiry date of the vaccines.
“Although access to more vaccines is crucial, some African countries must step up their efforts to quickly start the administration of the vaccines they have,” the WHO said.
The Pfizer vaccine program donation from the United States may solve the long-term vaccine demand to a certain extent, but in the short term, supply and logistics issues may continue to be an obstacle to global epidemic prevention.
