China News Service, September 24. According to the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) Chinese website on the 23rd, the imbalance of global vaccine supply is very serious.
More than half of the people in the world have not received even one dose of the new crown vaccine.
At the same time, rich countries are still hoarding surplus vaccines, many of which are facing the fate of being thrown away.
Data map: Pedestrians walk past the vaccination center of Westminster Abbey in London, England.
They are still
hoarding vaccines
Donation promises become "bad checks"?
According to reports, data shows that 75% of the new crown vaccine is sent to 10 countries.
The Economist Intelligence Unit calculates that so far, half of all vaccines have flowed to 15% of the world’s population, and the world’s richest countries have injected 100 times more vaccines than the poorest countries.
In June, members of the Group of Seven (G7) including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States pledged to donate 1 billion doses of vaccine to poor countries in the coming year.
"When I saw the news, I laughed." Agathe Demarais, a researcher at the Economist Intelligence Unit and a former diplomat, said. "I used to see this often. You know it will never happen. of."
The UK has pledged 100 million doses of vaccine, and so far, it has only donated less than 9 million.
Biden has committed 580 million, and so far, the United States has delivered 140 million.
The EU Group has promised to provide 250 million doses by the end of this year, and about 8% have already been delivered.
In addition, the "New Coronary Pneumonia Vaccine Implementation Plan" (Covax) supported by the WHO is also facing serious supply problems.
It plans to distribute 2 billion doses of vaccines in 2021, most of which come from a factory in India, but when the second wave of infections occurred in India in May, the Indian government issued an export ban.
Since then, Covax has relied on donations from rich countries.
However, the rate of donation has been slow, and some recipient countries have not even been able to vaccinate 2% of their population.
Covax manager Aurélia Nguyen said that the total amount of vaccines currently shared is small, short in time, and short in validity. This makes it necessary for countries receiving these vaccines to greatly improve their logistics capabilities.
Data map: People line up for vaccinations at the new crown vaccination site at Citi Field, home of the New York Mets baseball team.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Liao Pan
241 million doses may be wasted!
Surplus
vaccines continue to increase in rich countries
...
Another noteworthy issue is that data from Airfinity, a scientific analysis company that studies global supply, shows that the number of surplus vaccines in wealthy countries has been increasing.
Vaccine manufacturers now produce 1.5 billion doses per month, and 11 billion doses will be produced by the end of 2021.
"They are producing a large number of vaccines. In the past three or four months, the scale of production has been massively expanded." Airfinity chief researcher Matt Linley said.
Even if the world’s wealthiest countries start to administer booster shots, they may still have 1.2 billion unnecessary stocks.
Lin Li said that one-fifth of these vaccines, about 241 million doses, may be wasted if they are not donated as soon as possible.
Aurélia Nguyen of Covax says it’s not just the government that needs to act.
"We also need manufacturers to fulfill their public commitments to Covax and give priority to us instead of bilateral transactions with countries that already have sufficient doses."