WHO warns of "catastrophic moral failure" if covid vaccines do not reach poor countries

LondonThe world is one step away from a "catastrophic moral failure" that will cost millions of lives. The denunciation has been made this Monday by the director general of the World Health Organisation, Dr Tedros Adhanom, in view of the lack of equitable distribution of the vaccines against coronavirus and rich countries' lack of commitment and solidarity with poor countries. "More than 39 million doses have now been administered in at least 49 high-income countries. Only 25 doses have been administered in one low-income country. Not 25 million, not 25,000, just 25. I have to be forceful," he added, at the organisation's executive committee meeting. These 25 vaccines refer to those administered in Guinea Conakry thanks to a donation of Sputnik V vaccines. "The price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world's poorest countries" Dr Tedros stressed.

The data reinforces his comment. Just over 40 million people have been vaccinated worldwide so far, a million more than Dr Tedros mentioned, according to statistics from Our World in Data, a scientific team based at Oxford University. The comparison between poor and rich countries is extremely disappointing. With the exception of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand, where, with less urgency in the face of the pandemic, immunisation campaigns have also not been launched for reasons other than budget and lack of access to vaccines, Africa, Central Asia and Latin America are the regions that have been widely cut out of the vaccination process.

A separate case is that of Brazil, where the first six million vaccines from China's Sinovac arrived this Monday, but where the federal government of Jair Bolsonaro has no vaccination plan or strategy, and even more seriously, does not seem to believe in the need to immunise the population.

A rough estimate made public on Monday by Salvador Macip, professor of molecular biology at the University of Leicester, has put a figure on the number of deaths mentioned by the WHO director general. With current developments, Macip commented to the ARA, "on a global scale the pandemic has not yet reached its peak; therefore we can expect the total number of deaths to double [now over 2 million], which would mean at least five million confirmed deaths.

has denounced the economic interest of pharmaceutical companies, and countries' double standards, which have put their own interests before the commitments made for the COVAX programme, an initiative that sought to ensure that the research, purchase and distribution of any vaccine to combat covid-19 was shared equally between the world's richest countries and developing countries.

Macip is clear: "The pandemic is a global problem and has to be looked at globally". And either it is combated fully or "these actions [lack of solidarity] will only prolong the pandemic, the restrictions needed to contain it and the human and economic suffering," said Dr Tedros, who also called for "vaccination of health workers and elderly people to be implemented in all countries within the first 100 days of this year".

The deal of the century

vaccines it has boughtOxford/AstraZeneca, €1.78; Johnson & Johnson, €7.00; Sanofi/GSK, £€.56; CureVac, €10.00; Pfizer/BioNTech, €12.00; Moderna, €14.75

Of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine the European Commission has bought 600 million units. The final cost will therefore be €7.2bn. The 160m doses of Moderna vaccine will have a cost of €2.36bn; the 400m doses of Oxford/AstraZeneca, €712m; 300m doses of Sanofi/GSK, €2.268bn; 400m of Johnson & Johnson, €2.8bn; and 405m doses of CureVac, €4bn. In total, purchases worth €19.39bn euros that could still increase if the pre-contracts established with Novavax and Vanelva are formalised.

The other major difficulty for the vaccination campaign to reach the whole world is logistics. And until the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine - not only the cheapest, but also the easiest to preserve (in a conventional refrigerator, between 2 and 8 degrees centigrade) - is fully distributed, the end of the pandemic across the planet more than a short-term goal will be a utopia.