So far, there has been no lack of full-bodied announcements in the Corona crisis: Nobody is safe until everyone is safe, it is said again and again at the international level, states outbid each other with announcements of how many vaccine doses they will pass on to poorer countries.
But while the number of new infections is rising again in many poorer countries, the aid from the richer nations falls far short of the promises.
Claudia Bröll
Freelance Africa correspondent based in Cape Town.
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Christoph Hein
Business correspondent for South Asia / Pacific based in Singapore.
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Johannes Pennekamp
Responsible editor for economic reporting, responsible for “Die Lounge”.
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According to an evaluation commissioned by the development organization Oxfam, which was published on Thursday, only 14 percent, or 261 million doses, of the 1.8 billion doses promised by Europe and other G-7 countries have arrived.
"If we fail to vaccinate most of the world's population, the virus will spread and mutate into an increasingly dangerous form," the analysis said.
Most of the vaccines came from the United States, according to the report.
The 177 million cans would only correspond to 16 percent of the previous amount.
International vaccination mission came away empty-handed
Germany is not doing well either: At the beginning of September, the health ministers of the G-20 countries signed the “Pact of Rome”. In this context, Federal Health Minister Spahn announced that the Federal Republic would donate 100 million vaccine doses to other countries - by the end of the year. Until the middle of this week that was still a long way off. Statistics from the Federal Ministry of Health show that 11.5 million Astra-Zeneca vaccine doses have so far been given to the international vaccine initiative Covax (or are currently being given) and a further 7.7 million doses have been sent directly to countries such as Ukraine, Vietnam and Thailand . The ministry did not answer the question of whether Spahn's promise could be kept by the end of the year.
Disillusionment had already spread over the past few weeks. The Covax initiative had to say goodbye to its goal of having cared for 2 billion people in the 92 poorest countries in the world by the end of the year. The new goal is to distribute 1.4 billion cans there, but that too still seems a long way off.
The chairman of the initiative's procurement committee, John Arne Røttingen, had made serious allegations against governments and vaccine manufacturers a month ago. When asked whether the richer states that publicly support Covax were buying the vaccine away from the poorer countries, he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung: "In any case, the suspicion arises that other customers are simply preferred to us for commercial reasons." It seems reasonable to assume that manufacturers are getting involved because they earn more with it.
Røttingen also cited the fact that the initiative also focused on vaccine candidates that had not made it to market, and that an export ban from India had eliminated the largest vaccine supplier, the Serum Institute of India, for the recipient countries. India wanted to vaccinate its own population first.
The country has just announced that it has now administered a billion vaccinations.
The progress in the country of 1.4 billion people, whose government had cruelly underestimated the second corona wave, feeds hope for exports from the “pharmacy of the world”: India has not exported any corona vaccine at all since April.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi then promised deliveries across the borders in October.
Strategically important neighboring countries such as Bangladesh and Iran have now received four million vaccine doses.
Contrary to all promises, the international Covax vaccination mission has so far been left empty-handed.
Widespread vaccination skepticism
In Africa, vaccination efforts have picked up in recent times despite low shipments. Nevertheless, the continent lags far behind other regions in the world. So far, only 5 percent of 1.2 billion people have been fully vaccinated, said the director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, John Nkengasong. He made a strong appeal to people in all countries to get vaccinated.
Apart from bottlenecks on the supply side, there is widespread skepticism about vaccinations in numerous countries. In addition, there are many logistical challenges, said Nkengasong. The vaccines would have to be distributed throughout the country, and skilled employees were needed. In addition, the population must be informed. Eritrea is now the only country on the continent that has not yet been vaccinated.
In South Africa, the country with the highest number of reported infections on the continent, almost 37 percent of the population are now fully vaccinated. As of this week, adolescents over the age of 12 can also have the injection. South Africa is a main location for its own vaccine production in Africa. The listed pharmaceutical company Aspen fills and packages Johnson & Johnson vaccines there. The semi-state owned Biovac company recently signed a contract to fill up to 100 million doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine annually. In the longer term, the company wants to get into the full production of Covid vaccines. Public pressure on pharmaceutical companies to manufacture in Africa is growing.Recently, the American company Moderna announced the construction of a production facility and investments of up to $ 500 million.