SINGAPORE (Reuters) – COVID-19 vaccination programs in China and India will extend to the end of 2022 due to their large population size, and no more than 85 poor countries will have access to vaccines by 2023, Wednesday’s study showed.
While the rapid development of vaccines has dashed hopes for the pandemic throughout the year, concerns about unequal distribution have also emerged due to production problems and major bilateral agreements between rich and wealthy countries. drug production.
U.S. President Joe Biden said Tuesday that the United States aims to receive an additional 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and its partners BioNTech and Moderna Inc by the summer.
In Europe, the European Commission is establishing a proposal to restrict COVID-19 vaccine exports amid frustrations over delays in AstraZeneca vaccine delivery and other supply problems.
“Most developing countries will not have wide access to the sights by 2023 at the earliest,” said Agathe Demarais, director of the Economic Intelligence Unit, a research division of the Economist Group
“Some of these countries – especially the poorest with a young demographic profile – may lose the incentive to roll out vaccines, especially if the disease is widespread or the associated costs are too high. . ”
It is likely that most African countries will not receive widespread vaccination coverage until early 2023, and many Asian countries will have widespread access to vaccines by the end of 2022.
The report said delivery of vaccines to poor countries with the COVAX global vaccine sharing scheme, supported by the World Health Organization, could be slow due to delays in delivery to rich countries first and poor infrastructure in the underlying world. development.
COVAX stated that 92 billion doses would be given to 92 poor countries in 2021 and that this would correspond to about 27% of the population in those countries.
Reciting with Miyoung Kim; Edited by Michael Perry