Anti-Covid vaccine: after stopping exports from India, delays for Covax
The first shipment of vaccines from the Covax program arriving at the airport in Accra, Ghana, on February 24, 2021 (Photo illustration) Nipah Dennis AFP
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
It is the anti-covid vaccine that should make it possible to get out of the pandemic as quickly as possible.
But it is also the one that elicits the most comments, and a new setback for AstraZeneca.
Faced with the surge in new cases, India announces that it is suspending the export of the vaccine manufactured on its soil to prioritize its population.
More than a year after the start of the pandemic, the variants seem to have overcome international solidarity.
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From our correspondent in Geneva
Jérémie Lanche
The first victimized countries are Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and even the United Kingdom.
All those countries that were to receive millions of doses of the vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India will not be delivered on time.
According to
Reuters
, India should no longer export any dose before stabilizing its epidemiological situation.
And it could take 2-3 months.
►Also read: Vaccine against Covid-19: the UN calls for equitable access to Covax
This is certainly a setback for the WHO Covax program, which is hyper dependent on Indian production.
Of the 31 million doses already delivered to low-income countries, more than half are manufactured in India.
Countries have received nothing
Countries experiencing some of the most serious humanitarian crises, such as Yemen, Syria or South Sudan, have still not received anything.
And it is not clear when they will be delivered.
The hunt for exports is becoming more and more widespread.
In Italy, some 30 million doses of AstraZeneca's vaccine have been seized near Rome over fear that they will be exported outside the continent.
But AstraZeneca has since assured that these were doses intended for the Covax program.
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