There have been a lot of coverage of Teodros comments on the fact rich countries are buying up the vaccine supplies. The UK has orders for three times the number of vaccines than it needs. CRAZY!!!
Or is it. Look – once people are vaccinated the UK can’t use the rest of the orders, so we know they will be released to poorer countries.
Why has the UK got such a good position – well it started to negotiate purchase really early (the EU is borderline enough vaccine for the population). Nobody could tell what would be approved and when – so the UK hedged it’s bets. It currently has only enough purchased and in deployment to cover the country once. Most other countries (all of the EU for example) are still hoping for the vaccines that are in development and may not be approved till later this year (if ever).
The UK also created a less bureaucratic approval system than most countries (a simple way of looking at it is that most countries only started watching the box set once the final episode came out, while the UK watched the episodes as they were produced). It was only a few weeks difference, but this meant the UK could take all of the initial production.
Is this all unfair? What about poor countries? Hey – we have COVAX – where does that fit in, and this GAVI thing and all those other acronyms?
Remember back in June I wrote about millennium goals (that became the SDGs)
In 2003, in order to help meet the millennium goals for health the UK set up a special fund to support the availability of vaccines for poorer countries. The UK currently accounts for more than 40% of the donations.
But panic panic – a pandemic has arrived. So the WHO, The EC and France decided they needed COVAX.
What will COVAX do? Well, maybe the best way to look at it is that COVAX membership means we will try to cover the first four groups (I’ve used the UK groups because it is close) by the end of 2021. The UK will have covered those groups in the country by mid-February. So let this sink in – what COVAX suggests is that we should stop first vaccinations in the UK at that point until the rest of the world catches up (we would carry on with second vaccinations). That is what Teodros was calling for between the lines.
The more complicated part of this is that most countries will not have approved the vaccines by that point, so we could even up with a glut of vaccines while we wait for the paperwork to be produced (you see not all countries are backing all vaccines – the Oxford vaccine is currently only approved in about 10 countries – the other countries cannot use it yet even if they had it!).
And now think carefully about the vaccine rollout here – we are being contacted when it is our turn. John Smith at 3 Smith Street and John Smith at 7 Smith Street can be identified as separate people and contacted when their time is right. Now apply this to poorer countries – does that approach work? Or would it be more likely that a village by village approach would more appropriate rather than an age based approach?
The EU have adopted a single approach (the centre controls for all). Did you know the vaccine they have approved and deployed is only enough for about two thirds of the population. That should get up to 95% by the summer. And a lot of those orders were last minute.
To me this could be a BREXIT problem. What? Are you daft? How can it be a BREXIT problem?
To propose the vaccination of only 20% of the world by the end of 2021 is just not ambitious enough, COVAX should have set a much much tougher goal. To only order enough vaccines to cover your population when you do not know which will be approved and when is not ambitious enough.
The approach of COVAX and the EC has been very tame in comparison to the UK approach. Given that the UK was not involved in the setting up of COVAX it is surprising that they are the biggest donor (giving about one and a half times much as the whole of the EU combined).
I have no doubt that the EC and COVAX approach would have been much more ambitious had the UK still been an influence in the EU.
Teodros – we cannot afford to only vaccinate 20% of the world in 2021 – you need to raise your target, not complain that some countries have been too ambitious.