The number of Covid-19 vaccinations worldwide has exceeded the total number of confirmed cases, a landmark moment that highlights the progress made in controlling the pandemic, despite growing concern about the threat of new variants.
According to the Financial Times vaccine tracker, the total number of doses administered rose to 105 million on Wednesday night, while the number of confirmed cases was 103.5 million.
Although vaccination rates are accelerating rapidly, the increase in Covid-19 cases is decreasing, although this is due to measures other than vaccines, because they have not yet affected transmission in most places.
The numbers are incomplete due to the fragmented nature of the reports – and the actual number of infections is likely to be many times greater than the total verified by diagnostic tests.
But Michael Head, a global health researcher at the University of Southampton, said: “The fact that we have so many vaccines is great and good news that has been passed on to us in pieces. This moment brings everything together, showing how fast we move and how far we have come. “
Health experts attribute the slowdown in the growth of infections to continuous blocks and measures of social distance, with a possible contribution of immunity acquired by previous infection in some places.
Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, said the new infection rates peaked globally in early January and have now returned to last October’s level.
Israel is the only country where vaccines are already reducing transmission because inoculation has been implemented more widely and faster there than anywhere else in the world. “There is evidence from Israel that vaccination is starting to reduce the infection,” said Dr. Head.
But vaccines will soon make a big difference in transmission, at least in wealthy countries, where billions of doses will be available in the coming months, after weeks of disputes – especially in the EU – over supplies.
Data released by the University of Oxford on Monday suggested that the vaccine developed with AstraZeneca would reduce transmission by 67 percent. Experts hope that other major vaccines, such as those manufactured by BioNTech / Pfizer, Moderna, Novavax and Johnson & Johnson, will have similar effects, although hard data is not yet available.
Devi Sridhar, professor of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, said: “A year ago, I couldn’t imagine that we would have so many effective vaccines. This is a true testament to human ingenuity. “
Sean Marett, business director at BioNTech, the pioneer vaccine manufacturer Covid-19, said: “There will be enough doses in the second half of this year to vaccinate everyone in the industrialized world who wants to be vaccinated.”
However, a threat to progress is the emergence of new variants of the virus, which appear more frequently as cases increase. Some are more infectious – and less susceptible to neutralization by the immune system of people who have been vaccinated or infected with older forms of viruses.
Vaccine manufacturers say their existing products continue to work against all the mutations detected so far, although less effectively against new ones, such as the South African strain. They also insist that vaccines can be adjusted quickly, if necessary, to respond to new mutations, increasing the expensive prospect of annual or biennial vaccines being needed in the future.
It is unclear how long it will take to inoculate the entire world. Confirmed purchases of Covid-19 vaccines reach 7.2 billion doses, and 5.3 billion of them have been purchased by high- and middle-income countries, according to Duke University’s Global Health Innovation Center. Most of these vaccines will need two jabs.
The Wellcome Trust estimates that it won’t be until 2023 or 2024 that anyone who needs a vaccine will be able to get it. Others think it could be sooner than that if wealthy countries and organizations donated overdoses to poorer nations.
Another potential problem is the hesitation of the vaccine and, in particular, if a sufficient number of young adults, who know that their risks of needing intensive care or dying from Covid-19 are very low, will agree to be vaccinated.
Professor Sridhar said that one way to convince young people to be vaccinated – and to help achieve collective immunity in the community – would be to point out the significant risk of developing debilitating “long Covid” symptoms in patients who have not become seriously ill.
“Two million people worldwide have died in this pandemic,” she said. “I am optimistic that we can get to the end of this without another 2 million deaths.”