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By Tiziana Di Giovannandrea

March 26, 2021 At least four more vaccines are on the way in 2021 and by the end of the year, it is expected that the anti Covid-19 vaccines could reach a global production of almost 9.5 billion doses.



This is almost double the production of the 5 billion doses per year of the normal world production of all vaccines, but it is not enough to crush the Coronavirus pandemic.

In fact, current estimates foresee a demand of 11.5 billion doses: 18% more.



The data emerge from the map presented by the

journal Nature

on its website and are based on elements provided by the analysis company Airfinity.

The study shows that at least four other vaccines are on the way in 2021, including Curevac and Novavax, while 77 trials are underway, of which 17 have reached the most advanced stage of testing.

Poorer



disadvantaged countries

There are however two problems to be highlighted: the first is the presence of variants of the SarsCoV2 virus, some of which could escape vaccines;

the second is the great disparity in distribution, with the poorest countries having so far received a quantity of doses 8.5 times lower than those available in the industrialized world.

It is estimated that 11 million doses are those needed to vaccinate 70% of the world population, considering that almost all vaccines require the administration of two doses per individual.



According to a study by the

Global Health Innovation Center

of

Duke University

, almost all of the doses, about 6 billion, it is currently available in the higher-income countries while a small portion is for low-income countries.

The latter, in which four-fifths of the world population live, with their own strength, can access about 700 million doses, to which are added the 1.1 billion made available by

Covax

, the international program born on the initiative of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi), the Global Alliance for

Gavi

vaccines

and the World Health Organization (

WHO

). 



Vaccine production

map The global

vaccine

map indicates that since the beginning of 2021 413 million doses have been produced in the world, most of which by the American Pfizer with the German BioNTech (119 million).

Followed by the Chinese Sinovac (91), the Anglo-Swedish AstraZeneca (83), the American Moderna (61) and, at a distance, the vaccines of the Chinese Sinopharm (38), the Russian Sputnik V (10), the Indian Bharat (5.5) and finally those of the American Johnson & Johnson (4) and the Chinese CanSino (2).



Right now

the largest

vaccine

producer

in the world

is China

, with 141.6 million doses from four companies, followed by the United States (103 million doses from two companies), Germany and Belgium (70.5 million doses from one company). company), India (42.3), Great Britain (12.2), Belgium and Russia with 10.4 million doses each, Switzerland (5.4), South Korea (1.6), Brazil (200,000) and South Africa (160,000).

From the Aifinity analysis it emerges that disparities and disappointed expectations have characterized the vaccine race from the beginning, starting from the 31 million doses actually produced in 2020, equal to just 4% of the 837 million doses expected for the same year. .