For poor countries, road to vaccine far longer and rougher

Volunteers wait to be checked at a vaccine trial facility for AstraZeneca near Johannesburg, South Africa, in November. Pic/AP

With Americans, Britons and Canadians rolling up their sleeves to receive coronavirus vaccines, the route out of the pandemic now seems clear to many in the West, even if the rollout will take many months. But for poorer countries, the road will be far longer and rougher. The ambitious initiative known as COVAX created to ensure the entire world has access to COVID-19 vaccines has secured only a fraction of the 2 billion doses it hopes to buy over the next year, has yet to confirm any actual deals to ship out shots and is short on cash.

COVAX was set up by the WHO, alliance of GAVI and CEPI, a global coalition to fight epidemics, to avoid the international stampede for vaccines.

Deal for merely 200 doses

To date, COVAX's only confirmed, legally binding deal is for up to 200 million doses, though that includes an option to order several times that number of additional doses, GAVI spokesman James Fulker said. It has agreements for another 500 million vaccines, but those are not legally binding.

The virus has exposed vast inequities between countries, as fragile health systems and smaller economies were often hit harder. But now some experts say the chances that coronavirus shots will be shared fairly between rich nations and the rest are fading fast. Some poorer countries that signed up to the initiative are looking for alternatives because of fears it won't deliver.

OK vaccine before Christmas: Germany to EU

Germany's health minister has increased his pressure on the European Union's regulatory agency and demanded that a vaccine be approved before Christmas. News agency dpa reported on Tuesday that health minister Jens Spahn said "our goal is an approval before Christmas so that we can still start vaccinating this year, also in Germany." Spahn is pushing for a quick approval of a new vaccine developed by Germany's BioNTech and American drugmaker Pfizer.

COVID has killed over 3 lakh in US

The US death toll from the coronavirus topped 3,00,000 on Monday just as the country began dispensing COVID-19 shots in a monumental campaign to conquer the outbreak.

The number of dead rivals the population of St. Louis or Pittsburgh. It is equivalent to repeating a tragedy on the scale of Hurricane Katrina every day for 5 1/2 months.

It is more than five times the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War. It is equal to a 9/11 attack every day for over 100 days. "The numbers are staggering - the most impactful respiratory pandemic that we have experienced in over 102 years, since the iconic 1918 Spanish flu," Dr Anthony Fauci, the top infectious-disease expert, said days before the milestone. If a second vaccine is authorised soon, as expected, 20 million people could be immunized by month's end.

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