The world's population is at risk of not being collectively immune to the coronavirus in 2021. -

Marco Passaro / IPA / SIPA

  • The planet will not be rid of the coronavirus in 2021.

    On Monday, the World Health Organization warned that planetary herd immunity would not be achieved this year.

  • If some countries, like Israel, already massively vaccinate their populations, it will take more than a few months for this to be the case in all the nations of the world.

  • Lack of stock, rising prices and stranglehold of the rich countries on vaccine doses ... "20 Minutes" takes stock of this unachievable goal in one year.

“Three, two, one… Happy New Year!

“On January 1 at midnight, we all buried 2020 with the idea that she would take with her the masks, social distancing and all the restrictive measures related to the coronavirus.

But on Monday, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that all this would surely remain wishful thinking, declaring that herd immunity would not be reached in 2021 despite the massive arrival of vaccines, and that the actions barriers should continue to apply "at least until the end of the year."

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Between our dreams of being finally rid of the Covid-19 and reality, the WHO has targeted two major obstacles: the supply of vaccines for all the nations of the world, and once received, the time taken for a campaign vaccination program to deploy.

More than 10 billion doses required as a minimum

The first point is a quote from Mounia N. Hocine, biostatistician and vaccine specialist: “Laboratories will never have the production capacity necessary to cover the entire world population in a single year.

Take the most advanced and massively produced vaccine, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

The latter is administered in two doses.

At the cost of considerable effort, the company estimated on Monday to be able to produce two billion doses in 2021 (against 1.3 billion initially planned).

Enough to vaccinate "only" a billion people, and again on condition of not losing any dose in the batch, which seems to be utopian.

France has for example ordered more than 200 million doses of different vaccines "for safety", in the words of Prime Minister Jean Castex, while in view of its population, a stock of 134 million would normally be sufficient.

However, to achieve collective immunity, epidemiologist Katherine O'Brien, director of the WHO vaccination department, warned that 70% of the population had to be vaccinated.

Which, compared to the world population, corresponds to 5.6 billion inhabitants.

That is 11.2 billion doses needed, without any loss.

Even counting on other vaccines, including Moderna which was recently authorized and validated - "such production in one year" is fanciful, according to the biostatistician.

The poorest countries injured

Especially since this dose limit has had a perverse effect.

Knowing that sesame was limited, the rich countries threw themselves on the available stocks, inevitably pushing up prices, and making the vaccine all the more difficult to access in poor or emerging countries.

As early as October, WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned: “The best way to use the vaccine is to vaccinate certain people in all countries rather than all people in certain countries.

Vaccine nationalism will prolong the pandemic, it will not shorten it.

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Jérôme Marty, general practitioner in Haute-Garonne and head of the union of the French Union for Free Medicine (UFML), draws a parallel with the crisis of masks during the first wave: “The richest countries will outbid stocks already purchased elsewhere and seize them, which will slow the global supply.

And the faster they vaccinate, the sooner they will run out of stock, then re-bid, to the detriment of countries that have not yet started their vaccination campaign.

"The gap would therefore risk widening even more, the doctor regrets:" It would have taken a supranational body to distribute vaccines across countries, such as the UN ... or the WHO, instead of letting each nation do its own thing. stock.

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Rapid campaigns once the doses have been received?

Another key point for rapidly developing collective immunity is the logistics of vaccination.

Mounia N. Hocine: “In France, we can see that we do not rush to get vaccinated.

At the pace adopted, it is not even sure that we have collective immunity, even in the country, in 2021. "For the sole case of the tricolor nation, Jérôme Marty wants to be more optimistic:" France has the capabilities logistics and infrastructure to vaccinate tens of millions of people in a few weeks, we see it with the flu.

The doses are just missing, and the support of the population will come… but not all countries have our organization or our infrastructures.

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Last but not least, the unforeseen.

Jérôme Marty is worried about delays, redemptions and other classic delivery problems in this kind of scenario.

When Mounia N. Hocine recalls: “The longer we delay vaccinating, the more the virus can mutate and make the vaccine obsolete.

It's a race against time ”.

Which will certainly not be won in 2021.

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