The world’s poorest countries are at high risk from the long-term spread of COVID-19 after some of the richest countries, representing just 14 percent of the world’s population, 53 percent of the world’s largest vaccines promising to buy so far.
As a result, it could take until late 2022 or early 2023 before even half the population in low-income countries will receive the vaccine.
Many underdeveloped countries have reported very few cases and deaths of COVID-19, with an African continent of 54 countries reporting fewer deaths than France, but this is a true estimate of the true number. The appalling lack of resources for testing for disease, the stigma attached to recognizing the disease, and even the lack of universal death registration systems make the official numbers completely but pointless.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), welcomed the vaccines, saying they provided “a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel.” However, he said, “we will not end the pandemic if we end it everywhere at once, which means that vaccination is essential. to some people in every country, rather than to everyone in some country. ”
Ghebreyesus said, “Vaccines add to, but do not replace, the many other tools we have in our toolbox to stop them spreading and save lives. We must continue to use them. ”
In fact, the situation of the working class in the progressive countries of capitalism and brutality is similar. While the imperial institutions have a monopoly on vaccination, market anarchy and the disdain of the financial oligarchy are approaching the lives of millions, including the spread of vaccination fueled by barriers and half-steps.
It is doubtful whether any country can end their epilepsy through vaccination alone. Around 70 per cent of the world’s population would need to be vaccinated to achieve “herd immunity”, a target that is unlikely to be achieved in the short term, in part because most of the vaccines approved for the under-16 group.
The race for vaccines against rapidly spreading viruses that travel without border control has set in place strong national competition that threatens to spread and strengthen the pandemic.
The instability of the capitalist system of production for private profit, not the public good, means that the pandemic would kill many more people around the world for years to come and be resurrected. even in countries that are able to control it through vaccination. In addition to causing massive and unnecessary loss of life, the pandemic will lead to billions of people living in poverty.
A handful of major drug companies that have patented the vaccines, as a result of costly research conducted largely in publicly funded laboratories, will raise obscene profits for years to come.
Manufacturers of just three vaccines, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca, plan to deliver around 5.3 billion doses in 2021 to vaccinate around 2.6 billion people (two doses are needed to protect against the crown virus). With rich countries already ordering large quantities – more than half of the promising vaccines – the People ‘s Vaccination Alliance, including Amnesty International, Oxfam and Global Justice Now, is warning that vaccines are not enough there to go around.
According to the Alliance, richer countries have purchased enough doses to vaccinate their total populations three times over, with Canada prescribing enough vaccines to protect each citizen five times. The U.S. has ordered 1.1 billion doses of a number of potential vaccines, nearly twice the required number. Only three countries, Australia, Canada, and Japan, have received higher doses of vaccines than Latin America and the Caribbean – which account for more than 17 percent of global coronavirus cases.
During the swine flu (H1N1) revolution, the U.S. and other rich countries bought almost all available vaccines. Swine flu killed more than a quarter of a million people worldwide in 2009-10. Wealthier countries agreed to share some vaccines with low-income countries just after they met their own needs.
In the HIV / AIDS epidemic, poor countries were taken out of the market for life-saving medicine because companies were pushing for an international price. As a result, the cost of antiretroviral drugs on the basis of change with per capita GDP was higher in South Africa than in Sweden or the US, putting it beyond the reach of millions of South Africans the HIV / AIDS.
Pharmaceutical companies, backed by the U.S. Clinton administration and some European governments, have sued the South African government for buying cheaper sex drugs overseas, citing South African president Nelson Mandela , as the main defendant and simply dismissed their case in the face of major international protests.
Earlier this year, instead of coordinating the production and distribution of personal protective equipment, airplanes, and medicines that did not prepare for a future pandemic, the Union added European Union (EU) along with 70 other countries ban or restrict their exports. .
Belgian Budget Secretary of State Eva De Bleeker revealed the large scale of profit margin by Big Pharma. She posted on Twitter – then abruptly deleted – the prices the EU was negotiating to pay as a block, for the major Covid vaccines. The data showed significant price changes between manufacturers, with Moderna, whose research was funded by the U.S. government, rising 10 times the price of Oxford / AstraZeneca, whose research was funded by UK government:
- Oxford / AstraZeneca: € 1.78 / $ 2.16
- Johnson & Johnson: $ 8.50 / $ 10.33
- Sanofi / GSK: € 7.56 / $ 9.19
- Pfizer / BioNTech: € 12 / $ 14.59
- CureVac: € 10 / $ 12.16
- Moderna: € 14.80 / $ 18
The US paid $ 1.2 billion to get 300 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines for Americans, even before they were proven safe or effective, an amount equal to $ 4 per dose, twice the amount paid EU. The US paid $ 19.50 per dose for the Pfizer vaccine compared to $ 14.59 with the EU, boosting fuel in the U.S. Congress. In comparison, a Moderna dose vaccine costs $ 18.00 in the EU compared to $ 14.80 in the US.
If or when the richest countries share their extra doses, they are likely to give or sell them at low cost bilaterally to their allies and client states, as an instrument of political power , rather than disseminating the vaccines through multilateral public health initiatives.
Anna Marriott, Oxfam ‘s health policy manager, said, “You should not be prevented from getting a life – saving vaccine because of the country in which they live or the amount of money in their pockets. But unless something changes dramatically, billions of people around the world will not get a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine for years to come. ”
Last October, India and South Africa called on the World Trade Organization to waive intellectual property protection for the vaccines and allow developing countries to make or introduce common versions. The US, EU and UK rejected the proposal.
Unable to pay the exorbitant prices that Big Pharma wants, around 94 low- and middle-income countries have signed agreements with Covax, a Public-Private Partnership in which international health organizations including the World Health Organization, the Alliance for Epidemic Preparation Innovations (CEPI) and GAVI, the Vaccine Federation. But this campaign will at best give vaccines to 20 percent of the population of the participating countries.
The Covax vaccine sharing scheme is one of three arms of the Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT) accelerator, established by the WHO, the European Commission, and the French government. It is part of a wider restructuring of the global public health industry following the HIV / AIDS trial, away from WHO and towards the private sector. The new initiatives will empower donor countries, philanthropy including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and new alliances such as GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance (which includes vaccine production corporations), and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.
Receiving countries have to sign vague contracts with tied strings, paying in advance without knowing what vaccine they will receive or when the doses will come. Covax provides an estimate of the price per dose, but the buyer has to bear the risk if real costs run higher, if the vaccine fails or something goes wrong. Seth Berkley, chief executive of GAVI, said he could receive two billion doses with more after that, but declined to publish information about his contracts with the drug companies, describing them as commercial secrecy. He did not explain when supply would come, or where the $ 6.8 billion for the purchase would come from, or how distribution networks, which were already under the economic influence of the pandemic, would deal.
Many poor countries rely heavily on international aid agencies to get free or low-cost vaccines.
While publicly funded laboratories have made it possible for rapid development of vaccines, the catastrophic response of the major global capitalist powers to global COVID-19 makes it clear that capitalism must be stopped and human health taken away to private profit. The international working class must intervene to eradicate the pharmaceutical giants and all major industry sectors, transforming these monopolies into public facilities and democratically controlled to meet the needs of humanity.