The first shipment of COVAX vaccines arrives in Ghana, hope for developing countries

The first shipment of Covid-19 vaccines delivered through the World Health Organization’s COVAX program arrived in Ghana on Wednesday, a hopeful turning point for developing countries at risk of falling behind in global vaccination race against a virus that has killed nearly 2.5 million people worldwide.

The flight carried 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, one considered much easier to distribute to developing countries, as it does not require extremely cold storage temperatures, such as the Pfizer-GenTech and Moderna vaccines.

Vaccines delivered on Wednesday will be prioritized for front-line medical workers, people over 60 and those with pre-existing health conditions, according to the Ghana Ministry of Information.

“Today marks the historic moment for which we have been planning and working so hard,” UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said in a joint statement from her agency and the WHO in Ghana.

“With the first dose delivery, we can fulfill the promise of the COVAX Facility to ensure that people from less affluent countries are not left behind in the race for life-saving vaccines.”

COVAX is a global plan co-led by WHO, an international alliance against vaccines called Gavi and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

As richer nations move forward with the cost and development of the vaccine, poorer countries suffer the consequences of inequality. Mark Suzman, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said in December that it may be too late for an equitable distribution of vaccines because of the massive deals already being negotiated by rich countries.

Wealthy nations, which make up only 14 percent of the world’s population, had achieved 53 percent of the world’s best-performing coronavirus vaccine supply by December, according to a human rights group called the People’s Vaccine Alliance.

COVAX was established to achieve equitable access to vaccines worldwide, with the goal of vaccinating 20% ​​of people in the world’s 92 poorest countries by the end of 2021 through funding donations. There are several middle-income countries that will purchase COVAX vaccines on a self-funded basis. The plan aims to deliver 2 billion doses this year of vaccines that the WHO has approved as safe and effective.

The shots delivered to Ghana were produced by the India Serum Institute, which has been given access to the intellectual property that allows it to produce vaccines using the Oxford-AstraZeneca formula. The African Union has secured some 670 million doses of the Serum Institute vaccine for its member countries and aims to have 60% of the African population of 1.3 billion people inoculated in the next two to three years.

“This is surprisingly significant. We want the gap between vaccinating rich and poor people to be reduced to zero,” Hassan Damluji, deputy director of global policy and advocacy for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, told CNBC. Wednesday.

“We know that it usually takes decades between a vaccine being developed and used for the first time in rich countries and then reaching the poorest people in the world. Therefore, Ghana will have to receive its first shipment, just three months from now. of the first vaccine the deployment in the world is more than exceptional, ”he said. “It’s by far the fastest in history.”

The Gates Foundation has spent $ 1.75 million on efforts to fight coronavirus and has focused its efforts on vaccine development within COVAX.

Damluji noted that the acquisition of vaccines from the program for poor countries has been fully funded by donors at a time when all the economies of the developed world are in recession. “So it’s pretty remarkable,” he said.

Excluding poor countries from vaccination programs implemented in richer nations will have devastating and prolonged consequences, warn economists and public health experts, which dramatically increase inequalities, hamper social and economic development and leave many countries in significantly larger debt.

These inequalities mean that the long-term economic damage from the pandemic will be twice as severe in emerging markets as in developed ones, according to Oxford Economics. And a study by RAND Corporation predicts that the global economy will lose $ 153 billion a year if emerging countries do not access vaccines.

COVAX donation plan countries plan to obtain proportional doses to their populations: Afghanistan will receive 3 million doses, for example, while Namibia receives just under 130,000.

Palestinian territories expect to receive vaccines through COVAX in March; Iran and Iraq are also part of COVAX, as are many lower-income Middle Eastern countries. The richest Gulf states have purchased their own vaccine shipments directly from manufacturers, while some also contribute to the set of COVAX donations despite suffering their own recessions: Saudi Arabia has contributed $ 300 million and Qatar has given $ 10 million.

The United States had not contributed to the COVAX facility under the Trump administration, but the Biden administration has promised the largest donation to date: $ 4 billion.

Damluji pointed to the challenges of COVAX’s goals: running expansive inoculation campaigns in countries with poor infrastructure, limited transportation and logistics options, remote populations, and in some cases violence and war.

“These things are a moving goal. Rightly, the world’s attention is on that and it wants to make sure it’s going well,” he said. “But a couple of months ago, we didn’t even know what vaccines would work. And now people need them at the door.”

“There will be some complications that also arise,” he added. “It’s the biggest healthcare hiring effort.”