COVID vaccines: only 4% of 10 billion doses reached the poor
Pharmaceutical companies produced over 10 billion doses of COVID vaccines but a mere 4% of that was supplied to low-income countries, a new report shows.
Amnesty International said global promises of equitable distribution of coronavirus vaccines were falling flat as pharma giants prioritised wealthy countries and monopolised technology.
“More than 1.2 billion people in low and lower-middle income countries could have been vaccinated by the end of 2021 if high-income countries and vaccine makers took their human rights obligations and responsibilities to heart,” Rajat Khosla, Amnesty International’s senior director of research, advocacy and policy, said.
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Ten billion doses of COVID vaccines were produced last year, enough to reach the 40% target of global vaccination set by the World Health Organization (WHO) for the end of 2021.
But Pfizer (PFE.DE), BioNTech (BNTX) and Moderna (MRNA) supplied less than 2% of their vaccines to low-income countries.
Chinese companies Sinovac and Sinopharm delivered just 0.4% and 1.5% respectively of their vaccines to low-income countries, according to Amnesty International.
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and AstraZeneca’s (AZN.L) records on distribution showed that 50% of their stock reached low and lower-middle-income countries, although many of these doses were provided as “donations” from upper-income countries and not as part of sales agreements.
“While high income countries hoarded vaccines, callously choking supply to poorer parts of the world, pharma companies played a pivotal role in this unfolding human rights catastrophe — leaving those most in need to cope on their own,” Khosla said.
“These companies could have been the heroes of 2021. Instead, they turned their back on those who needed vaccines the most and just continued with business as usual, putting profits before people. If we want 2022 to be the last year of this pandemic, we need to shift course now to reach the 70% WHO-target by July of this year.”
Amnesty International is also calling on companies to share intellectual property.
South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa has blasted the EU’s unwillingness to push pharma giants to loosen access to intellectual property on jabs as “vaccine apartheid”.
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“They hoarded vaccines, they ordered more vaccines than their populations require. The greed they demonstrated was disappointing, particularly when they say they are our partners,” Ramaphosa said in December.
“Because our lives in Africa are just as important as lives in Europe, North America and all over."
But the EU has stated that low absorption of COVID vaccines in African countries had become the main problem in the global vaccine rollout following a recent increase in supplies of jabs.
"The problem seems no longer to be the level of donations," France's foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told a news conference in Lyon.
"The problem is absorption," he added at the end of a meeting of EU health and foreign ministers.
Only about 10% of Africans have been immunised against COVID so far.
Most COVID vaccine makers are now abandoning their not-for-profit pricing model as the disease was becoming endemic. A normal profit margin in the drugs industry is about 20%.
