New Delhi (NVI): With hopes that vaccines can bring an end to a pandemic, researches today suggested that nearly one in four people may not be able to get coronavirus vaccines until at least 2022 as rich countries with less than 15 per cent of the global population have reserved 51 per cent of the doses of the most promising vaccines.
As a result, low and middle-income countries – home to more than 85 per cent of the world’s population – would have to share the remainder, said researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the United States.
The researchers stated, an effective response to the pandemic requires high-income countries to share in an equitable distribution of Covid-19 vaccines across the world.
“The uncertainty over global access to Covid-19 vaccines traces not only to ongoing clinical testing, but also from the failure of governments and vaccine manufacturers to be more transparent and accountable over these arrangements,” they added.
As of November 15, high-income nations had pre-ordered nearly 7.5 billion doses of vaccines from 13 manufacturers, they further said.
This included Japan, Australia and Canada who collectively have more than 1bn doses but accounted for less than 1 per cent of current Covid-19 cases.
Even if leading manufacturers’ vaccines reach their projected maximum production capacity, nearly 25 per cent of the world’s population may not get the vaccines for another year or more, according to the research paper.
-CHK
