Chronicle Editor
Tanya Nyathi, Sunday News Correspondent
THE race to achieve global immunity against the deadly Covid-19 pandemic has reached a life-and-death level, as new strains threaten renewed outbreaks across continents.
More than 3,1 billion Covid-19 doses have been distributed and administered across 180 countries, according to latest data tracking the pandemic, collected by Bloomberg in June 2021. The latest rate was roughly 43,2 million doses per day with the United States having achieved about 325 million so far, reads the report. Mainland China had clocked 1,2 billion doses, the United Kingdom 77,3 million with the European Union sitting at 359,9 million.
While enough doses have now been administered to fully vaccinate 19,6% of the global population, the report notes that distribution has been lopsided.
“Countries and regions with the highest incomes are getting vaccinated more than 30 times faster than those with the lowest. Since the start of the global vaccination campaign, countries have experienced unequal access to vaccines and varying degrees of efficiency in getting shots into people’s arms,” Bloomberg reported.
One does not need a special set of spectacles to see that there is a serious gap when it comes to the distribution and administration of vaccines. Clearly, most of the doses have gone to wealthier countries and regions. The United States, for instance, had passed a milestone of administering 100 million doses as early as March 2021. And yet before March, few African nations had received a single shipment of shots.
Statistics from the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a specialised healthcare agency of the African Union, indicate that about 51 African countries had acquired about 61,4 million Covid-19 vaccines by 24 June 2021. By that time, around 1,12 percent of Africa’s population had received a full vaccine regimen with some 48,6 million of the total 61,4 million Covid-19 vaccine doses having been administered, it said.
Zimbabwe, which has about 15 million people, has recorded 48,533 cases and 38,323 recoveries having achieved a cumulative of 770,709 first doses and 544,888 under second dose. Five countries, namely Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria, Algeria and South Africa had acquired and administered the most doses of Covid-19 vaccines to their respective populations, according to the agency. These were also among states with most cases. In North Africa, Morocco had so far administered 17,7 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines, accounting for 22 percent of the country’s total population, it was noted.
As at 24 June 2021 the agency noted that the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Africa had reached 5 288 323, with 139 226 deaths and 4 669 913 recoveries. With the African continent lagging behind at less than 2 percent vaccination, the World Health Organisation has also been urging for equitable vaccine access. The inequalities in vaccinations pose a huge risk of pushing developing countries to the edge.
“Without access to vaccines, the gap will widen further”, the World Bank has warned, calling for “strong partnership and co-operation at the national, regional and global levels”.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) adds that the growing gap between the number of Covid-19 shots given in developed and developing countries will likely deepen existing socio-economic inequalities.
Amid this gap in access and administration of the Covid-19 vaccines are alarming revelations that the pandemic was already pushing upwards extreme poverty estimates. In this regard UNCTAD notes that between 119 and 124 million people fell into extreme poverty in 2020, with an additional 143 to 163 million expected to follow this year. These are worrying estimates, largely viewed as the first significant increase in global extreme poverty in the past two decades.
While G7 countries like the United States are slowly lifting restrictions on vaccination gains, around the world the virus continues to surge especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America. There are visible disparities in wealth and resources influencing the course of this pandemic. Now, what could bigger economies such as the United States do to get the vaccine to be more accessible to poorer countries?
“The initial thought was if we opened up patents, any country could be allowed to build a vaccine factory and develop vaccines,” says Prof Barry Bloom, researcher and former Dean at the Harvard T. Chan School.
However, considering how enormously complex it is to develop vaccines, low-income countries would struggle to fund the cost of equipment and any scientific resources needed to build vaccine infrastructure. There are a few countries that have the bulk of the world’s wealth and they also have the bulk of the world’s vaccines. If these wealthy economies took a bigger step like providing global aid, this would better manage the mutating variants in poorer countries, even if it means saving themselves.
While Africa has recently been pursuing investments into scientific expertise required to manufacture vaccines, with propositions to also harness indigenous health knowledge systems, financial and technological resource constraints have slowed down progress. This means the continent would need external funds to purchase equipment and train people on how to successfully produce its own vaccines. Already Africa seems frustrated by donor dependence, a sentiment that has been strongly expressed by the African Development Bank (AfDB) president, Dr Akinwumi Adesina.
“Africa needs solutions to help it navigate through the very challenging times posed by the Covid-19 pandemic,” Dr Adesina said recently, adding that solid economic rebound was dependent on access to vaccines.
Zimbabwe-born telecommunications mogul, Mr Strive Masiyiwa, who works closely with the African Union in facilitating vaccinations in the continent, has blamed Western countries for frustrating African efforts to develop its own vaccines. In fact, the African Union has been calling for a Covid-19 vaccine patent waiver to allow the continent to make its own vaccines as shortage continues in different countries. What is clear is that as long as the virus is transmitting, all bigger countries leading in vaccination are at risk of the new variants.
Ideal expectation is that both developed and developing states will collaborate in dealing with the common enemy — Covid-19 — through a well-coordinated global vaccination programme. This is critical in a globally connected world, as no country is an island when it comes to infections, and worse more under the spell of the third wave and new variants.
The unprecedented disruption to the global economy and deepening strain on public health and social crises, should motivate member states to unite in reversing the threat induced by the pandemic to the lives and livelihoods of millions. Perhaps, going forward, what Africa needs are raw materials to produce its own Covid-19 vaccines and not donations from the developed nations, says Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
Tanya Nyathi is medical editor for FCB Health, a top Pharma Agency in New York. She holds an M.Phil in Communication Management from University of Pretoria in South Africa and an MSc in Journalism at Columbia University in New York. For seven years, she has been a regular health and science contributor to African news publications with a global audience.
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Bongani Ndlovu