Developing countries are dangerously behind in the race to vaccinate the world against Covid-19, as mutations of the virus make it more difficult to catch up – a situation that could mean at least another year of humanitarian and economic misery for poor countries .
The US has now administered vaccine doses to about 12% of the population, while Europe has reached about 5%. But in South America, only 1.8% of the population had received a vaccine by this week, while Asia reached 1.5% and Africa 0.1%, according to Our World in Data, a project at the University of Oxford.
Nearly 130 countries have yet to administer a single dose, the World Health Organization said recently. Only two countries in sub-Saharan Africa – the Seychelles and Mauritius – have begun to vaccinate a significant portion of frontline workers, although others are likely to roll out shots in the coming days.
The critical shortage of vaccines for poorer countries threatens to be further mitigated by the emergence of new variants of the virus, including in South Africa and Brazil, which appear to make some of the vaccines that have been protected less effective. According to experts, large parts of Africa and some countries in Latin America and Asia are unlikely to make up most of their population before 2023 or 2024.
All of which means it could take years for life to return to normal in poorer countries, where more than 100 million people fell into extreme poverty last year and who don’t have enough resources to unleash as much government spending as rich countries. Some emerging markets that were able to take domestic stimulus last year have too little resources to continue.