COVID-19. MAD SCRAMBLE

Inequitable distribution amid acute shortage has derailed the global vaccination drive against We need to act fast to win the race against emerging virus variants

- VIBHA VARSHNEY

With 177 million people already affected and almost 4 million dead, the vaccination drive to combat covid-19 is perhaps the most anticipated event of our times. It is, after all, the best chance the world has to curtail the risk of new outbreaks and break the cycle of lockdowns and misery.

But for it to work, all countries need to vaccinate their people as fast as possible. Otherwise the constantly mutating sarscov-2 virus, that causes the disease, might develop ways to escape the immunity provided by the vaccines, making the entire exercise futile.

This is something that the world leaders knew much before the first covid-19 vaccine was administered in the UK in December 2020. The covid-19 Vaccines Global Access or COVAX was set up in April 2020 to accelerate the development, production and equitable access to vaccines. The alliance, by the World Health Organization (who), gavi and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, hopes to deliver 2 billion doses that would ensure at least 20 per cent of the population in each of its 190 member countries is fully vaccinated by 2021.

Yet six months later, shortages and inequitable distribution of doses threatens to derail the largest vaccination campaign the world has ever seen.

For one, COVAX has been facing acute shortfall since April 2021 after the major source of its vaccine, Serum Institute of India (sii), slipped on the delivery timeline because of a surge in covid-19 cases in India. So far, the alliance has received only around 30 per cent of the 252 million doses it had hoped to by June 2021.