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Vaccine supply outstrips demand, access inequity remains

Published : Monday, 11 April, 2022 at 12:00 AM  Count : 872

PARIS, April 10: After two years of racing to vaccinate the world against Covid-19, the number of available doses now surpasses demand in many areas.
Yet a yaiwning gap remains in vaccination rates between the richest and poorest countries.
On Friday, Gavi, which co-leads the Covax global distribution scheme, is holding a summit calling for more funds to address the issue of inequality in vaccine access.
More than 13 billion doses have been produced since the pandemic, 11 billion of which have been administered, according to the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA).
Science research group Airfinity expect nine billion more doses to be produced this year. Pfizer alone plans to make four billion doses.
Yet demand could fall to six billion doses this year, IFPMA's director general Thomas Cueni said.
"Since mid-2021, global vaccine production has exceeded global vaccine demand and this gap has continuously risen," Cueni told AFP.
By next year, production could exceed demand by 1.3 to 3.1 billion doses, he added.
Many richer nations are now approaching oversupply. European Union and G7 countries had a surplus of 497 million doses at the end of last month.
There are fears that doses could go to waste. Covid vaccines have a relatively short shelf-life -- AstraZeneca and Novavax's jabs have a six-month expiry date.
Airfinity says 241 million doses have passed their sell-by date so far during the pandemic.
Nevertheless, billions of people remain unvaccinated around the world, most of them in developing nations.
Covax, an international public-private partnership co-led by WHO and Gavi, has delivered 1.4 billion doses to 145 countries -- far short of the planned two billion doses by end-2021.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned that inequality in vaccine access could lead to the emergence of new, possibly more contagious variants.
The WHO wants 70 percent of every country's population vaccinated by July.
But records are uneven.
Nearly 80 percent of France's population, for example, has received two doses. But only 15 percent of the population on the continent of Africa is fully vaccinated, according to Oxford University data.
An average of 42 percent of the population of 92 low- and middle-income countries participating in Covax have had two doses.
"Vaccine inequity is the biggest moral failure of our times and people and countries are paying the price," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said earlier this year.
Covax says it now has enough doses to vaccinate around 45 percent of the population in the 92 countries receiving donations. But 25 of those countries lack the infrastructure for an effective immunisation campaign.
Making matters worse, many developing countries are being donated doses too close to their expiry date.
UNICEF's supply division director Etleva Kadilli said that in December almost more than 100 million doses had been refused, "the majority due to product shelf life".
Gavi has ruled that doses must be valid for at least 10 weeks on arriving in countries.    -AFP















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