“We have fought this virus, but we have fought it with rubber bullets,” said Kenyan Health Minister Mutahi Kagwe. “But what we have received here is, figuratively speaking, equivalent to purchasing machine guns, bazookas and tanks to fight this war against Covid-19.”
Weeks after many wealthier countries began to receive their first doses, COVAX began a delivery to Ghana last week. Days later, the country’s president became the first to be publicly vaccinated through the program.
“It is important that I set the example that this vaccine is safe by getting it first,” Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo said Monday, starting a nationwide vaccination campaign.
Ghana and Kenya, as well as Rwanda, Senegal, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, are among those who have received their first vaccines in recent days as COVAX is rolled out across Africa.
COVAX coordinators hope this will change soon as access continues to accelerate in developing countries.
“We’ve delivered 10 million doses in 14 countries so far, and we’ll put at least 10 million more in the next week and scale up from there,” said Dr. Seth Berkley, the CEO of Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, told CNN. “So yes, not enough doses and not as fast as we would like. It took us 83 days from the first shot in the UK to the first shot in Africa, but now we’re going to try and get as much of it in as we can. can. ”
COVAX, led by a coalition with Gavi and the World Health Organization, is using donations from governments and multilateral agencies to purchase vaccines for poorer countries that cannot afford contracts with major pharmaceutical companies.
The program has obtained vaccines from AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech and the Serum Institute of India, with the hope of additional doses from companies currently working on regulatory approvals. But getting enough supplies was difficult, in part because wealthier countries ordered more than they needed.
“The original challenge was that initially large orders were placed that included many doses,” Berkley said.
“It is estimated that countries are buying about 800 million more doses than they need based on their population, and an additional 1.4 billion in options. So we hope that some of these will either be donated or have their place in the US. release. queue so we can make sure we make vaccines available to everyone. ”
Another impediment to rapid delivery of vaccines to poorer countries may be the reluctance of drug manufacturers to relinquish certain intellectual property rights to the vaccines they have made.
“Now is the time to use any tool to scale up production, including licensing and technology transfer, and renounce intellectual property where necessary,” said WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a UN coronavirus briefing last week.
“When intellectual property is temporarily relinquished, we see a lack of cooperation and even serious resistance. To be honest I cannot understand this because this pandemic is unprecedented. The virus has taken the entire world hostage.”
Despite delays, COVAX strives to make the distribution of vaccines as equitable as possible. Of the more than 180 countries participating in the program, 92 qualify for free or discounted vaccinations.