At a time when the United States – one of the countries most affected by the pandemic – still has an average of 57,000 new cases, 40,000 hospitalized patients and 1,000 deaths from COVID-19 every day, it is difficult for ordinary Americans to think of how much worse most of the rest of the world does.
But when it comes to vaccination, Americans may soon be forced to do just that.
As the richest nation in the world, the United States has ensured that it will be able to return to normal much faster than almost any other country, for two simple reasons: (1) It is managing its current supply of vaccine doses faster than almost any other country, and (2) bought more doses of vaccine, from now on, than almost any other country.
Consider this comparison. The United States is currently consuming an average of 2.5 million doses a day, according to Bloomberg. At this rate, it will take another five months to cover 75% of the population – a reasonable limit for collective immunity, which is what happens when the virus begins to run out of unprotected hosts to infect.
At the same time, the United States has reserved a total of 1.2 billion doses from various manufacturers, enough to vaccinate its entire population twice.
The European Union is far behind. There, residents are being vaccinated at half the rate in the US: 1.2 million doses per day on average (despite the fact that the EU population exceeds the US population by 120 million). Unless things accelerate, it will take another 17 months for the EU to immunize 75 percent of its population – a year longer than in the United States.
But this is not even the worst.
As a bloc, the 27 EU countries have snapped up even more doses than the US – enough, in fact, to completely vaccinate 231% of its population. Ultimately, then, Europe must be covered, regardless of how much, if little, progress it has made in vaccinating residents – as well as powers like China and Russia (which plan to produce as much of their internally developed vaccines as needed) and other nations. or wealthy regions such as Canada (which secured enough doses for 335 percent of its population), Australia (235 percent), New Zealand (245 percent), Iceland (156 percent), Hong Kong (155 percent), Israel (138 percent), South Korea (135 percent) and Japan (129 percent).
The poorest nations will not be so lucky.
Dozens of developing countries will eventually obtain vaccines through COVAX, a consortium supported by the World Health Organization to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines; an agreement brokered by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim is set to deliver cheap vaccines across Latin America.
But even so, the percentage of these populations covered by current businesses is low, according to Bloomberg, ranging from 76 percent in Brazil to 61 percent in Egypt, 39 percent in South Africa, 23 percent largely Central America and the Caribbean, and 5% in most of Africa and the Middle East.
Of the vaccine doses administered globally, about three quarters went to just 10 countries. At least 30 nations have not yet injected a single person. South Africa, to cite an example, is administering less than 5,300 doses per day on average; at that rate, it would take more than 10 years to vaccinate 75 percent of its population. Brazil, with more than 300,000 lives lost, has the second highest number of deaths in the world – but so far it has totally vaccinated less than 2 percent of its population.
By Bloomberg’s accounts, 9.6 billion doses have already been booked worldwide, enough to cover more than half of the global population, if the injections were evenly distributed – which, of course, they are not. And even if they were, it would still take two and a half years to immunize 75 percent of the people on the planet at the current global vaccination rate.
Meanwhile, nations and regions with growing outbreaks are beginning to restrict vaccine exports. As the New York Times reported on Friday, “India, which had been a major vaccine distributor, is now retaining almost all of the 2.4 million doses manufactured daily by a private company there,” and the EU has presented ” emergency legislation that would restrict vaccine exports over the next six weeks. ”
The Biden government will soon face a difficult decision: what to do when the US supply exceeds demand, probably later this semester. Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson have pledged to deliver a total of 240 million doses to the United States by the end of March, and more than double by the end of May – enough to inoculate all adults in America. Likewise, governors and public health officials in more than 40 states have said they will meet or exceed President Biden’s goal of making all adults eligible for a vaccine by May 1, according to the New York Times, and at at least 30 states plan to start eligibility in March or April.
“We largely want to be part of the global solution here,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki this week – before adding that “there are still a number of unpredictable factors that we need to plan in the best way for our capacity, including variants and impact and what will be most effective, as well as what will work best with children ”, for which no vaccine has yet been approved.
In short, the contours of a new world divided between those who have and those who do not have a vaccine are already taking shape. For some, normal life is on the horizon; for others, the crisis will continue, with all its disturbances and dangers. In the meantime, the virus will continue to mutate as long as there is somewhere to spread.
The sooner rich countries like the United States use their abundant supply to vaccinate their own people, the sooner they can spread the surplus. And the sooner they can do that, the sooner the COVID-19 crisis can end – not just for the wealthy and fortunate few, but for everyone, everywhere.
____
Read more on Yahoo News: