Pfizer and Moderna are expected to make billions in revenue this year. It’s time all vaccine producers share their IP, data and know-how with the rest of the world.
The fight for vaccine equity needs to stop looking to multilateral institutions for permission and instead focus on the policy tools that are already available to states.
COVAX, the global vaccine distribution initiative, is well behind its goal of delivering 2 billion doses this year due to under-investment, vaccine nationalism and export restrictions.
Kenya grapples with two major challenges in the vaccination rollout: access to sufficient doses in light of the global shortage; and vaccine hesitancy.
The pandemic will not end for anyone, anywhere until it is controlled in every country. Tanzania’s approach will make it that much harder for normality to return.
Ghana’s mid-year target of procuring and administering 17.6 million COVID-19 vaccine doses may be constrained by global supply, cold chain capacity, and vaccine hesitancy.
If South Africa is serious about being able to supply anti-pandemic vaccines in future, it needs to rethink the scale of financial, technical and strategic investment into vaccine production.
The Trump White House questioned the value of foreign aid and neglected policies related to helping low-income countries. But US aid had already needed improvement.
Critics of the South African government argue that it has done too little too late to secure vaccines, and that it doesn’t have a proper plan in place for rollout.
It’s unlikely South Africa will have a substantial number of vaccines until the second half of this year. Most of the vaccines produced in Europe or America have been bought by other countries.
A waiver on some intellectual property rules at the WTO for COVID-19 vaccines would ensure more equitable access, but wouldn’t solve all the problems facing developing countries.
Dean Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at University of the Witwatersrand; and Director of the SAMRC Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand
Part-time lecturer at the Global Health & Social Medicine, Harvard University, and Lecturer at the School of Public Health, College of Health Sciences, University of Liberia