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Top line
The United States has pledged to donate 1.1 billion doses of the Covid-19 vaccine to the poorest countries by the end of 2022, as part of President Biden’s goal to vaccinate the world as rich countries are coming under heavy fire to rack up supplies and deploy booster shots, and here is where they are going.
The United States has donated 200 million doses of the Covid vaccine.
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Highlights
The top five recipients are the Philippines (16.4 million), Pakistan (15.8 million), Bangladesh (11.5 million), Indonesia (9.9 million) and Vietnam (8.5 million) , according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, followed closely by Mexico (8.2 million), South Africa (7.9 million) and Nigeria (7.6 million).
According to Kaiser, about 58% of U.S. donations went through the World Health Organization-led Covax vaccine sharing initiative, of which 42% went directly to countries.
The majority of the doses given are mRNA injections carried out by Pfizer and BioNTech (43%) or Moderna (35%), the Johnson & Johnson (16%) and AstraZeneca (1%) jabs constituting the remainder (5% are listed “Unknown”).
Donation deliveries have been steadily increasing since July – when 83.9 million were delivered, more than the next three months together – with 21.6 million delivered in August, 30.1 million in September and 31.4 million. million in October so far.
Most of the doses went to lower-middle-income countries (113.3 million), according to the World Bank classification, according to Kaiser, with 45.5 million shipped to upper-middle-income countries and 16 million to low-income countries.
Surprising fact
As of Oct. 22, the United States has donated 5.5 million doses to countries the World Bank classifies as high income, according to Kaiser. A recent report by the People’s Vaccine Alliance, an activist group including organizations such as Amnesty International, Oxfam and UNAIDS, found that wealthy G7 countries and Europe had donated 10 million doses of the vaccine directly to other high-income countries. The UK and Canada have also received doses of the Covax initiative, around 500,000 and 1 million respectively.
Large number
15 million. That’s at least the number of doses of the Covid-19 vaccine the United States threw away, according to CDC data between March and September.
Key context
While enough doses have been administered to fully immunize nearly half of the world’s population, the vast majority have been used by a handful of the world’s wealthiest countries. Many of these countries, including the United States, have vaccinated low-risk groups and are now launching booster campaigns as poorer countries still struggle to vaccinate a fraction of their population. Only 5% of Africa is fully vaccinated against Covid-19. Beyond fairness, experts believe the uneven distribution could prolong the pandemic for everyone and allow more dangerous virus variants to evolve. Covax Vaccine Sharing Initiative is hundreds of millions of vaccines below target and bogged down due to funding issues, vaccine access challenges and reluctance from rich countries to share supplies. Western pharmaceutical companies delivered a fraction – 12% – of the doses they pledged to sell on the initiative and rich countries delivered only 14% of the doses promised to the poorest countries between the end of 2021 and 2022. .
Further reading
Rich countries delivered just 14% of promised Covid vaccine doses to poorest nations, report says (Forbes)
Will new Covid treatments be as elusive for poor countries as vaccines? (NYT)
Next Africa: The Terrible Cost of Vaccine Inequalities (Bloomberg)
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