The first shipment of the COVAX vaccine arrives in Ghana, hope for the developing world

The first shipment of Covid-19 vaccines delivered through the World Health Organization’s COVAX program arrived in Ghana on Wednesday, a promising turning point for developing countries that are at risk of falling behind in the global vaccination race against a virus that has already killed almost 2.5 million people worldwide.

The flight brought 600 thousand doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, considered much easier to distribute to developing countries, as it does not require extremely cold storage temperatures, such as the Pfizer-GenTech and Moderna vaccines.

Vaccines delivered on Wednesday will be prioritized for frontline medical workers, people over 60 and those with pre-existing health problems, according to the Ghanaian Ministry of Information.

“Today marks the historic moment for which we have planned and worked so hard,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore in a joint statement by her agency and WHO in Ghana.

“With the first batch of doses, we can deliver on the COVAX Facility’s promise to ensure that people from less wealthy countries are not left behind in the race for life-saving vaccines.”

COVAX is a global plan co-led by WHO, an international vaccine alliance called Gavi, and Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

As wealthier nations move forward with the development and purchase of expensive vaccines, poorer countries suffer the consequences of inequality. Mark Suzman, chief executive of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said in December that it may already be too late for equitable distribution of vaccines because of the big deals already negotiated by rich countries.

Wealthy nations, which make up just 14% of the world’s population, have secured 53% of the world’s supply of the best performing coronavirus vaccines through December, according to a group of human rights activists called the People’s Vaccine Alliance.

COVAX was established to seek equitable access to the vaccine worldwide, with the goal of vaccinating 20% ​​of people in the world’s 92 poorest countries by the end of 2021 through donations. Several other middle-income countries are expected to purchase vaccines through COVAX on their own. The plan aims to deliver 2 billion doses of vaccines this year that have been approved as safe and effective by WHO.

The injections delivered in Ghana were produced by the Serum Institute of India, which had access to the intellectual property that allows it to produce vaccines using the Oxford-AstraZeneca formula. The African Union has secured about 670 million doses of the Serum Institute vaccine for its member countries, and aims to inoculate 60% of Africa’s 1.3 billion people population over the next two to three years.

“This is incredibly significant. We want the gap between when the rich and the poor are vaccinated to be reduced to zero,” Hassan Damluji, deputy director of global policy and defense for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, told CNBC in an interview on Wednesday -market .

“We know that it usually takes decades before a vaccine is developed and used for the first time in rich countries and then reaches the world’s poorest people. So for Ghana to receive its first shipment, just three months after the first vaccine launches in the world, it is beyond exceptional, “he said.” It is by far the fastest of all. “

The Gates Foundation spent $ 1.75 billion on efforts to combat the coronavirus and focused its efforts on developing vaccines within COVAX.

Damluji noted that the program’s procurement of vaccines for poor countries was fully funded by donors at a time when all economies in the developed world are in recession. “So it is remarkable,” he said.

The exclusion of poor countries from vaccination programs implemented in richer nations will have devastating and prolonged consequences, warn economists and public health experts, dramatically widening inequalities, damaging social and economic development and leaving dozens of countries with significantly higher debts.

These inequalities mean that the long-term economic damage of the pandemic will be twice as severe in emerging markets as it is in developed markets, according to Oxford Economics. And a study by RAND Corporation predicts that the global economy will lose $ 153 billion a year in production if emerging countries do not gain access to vaccines.

Countries in the COVAX donation plan should receive doses proportional to their populations: Afghanistan will receive 3 million doses, for example, while Namibia will receive just under 130,000.

Palestinian territories expect to receive vaccines via COVAX in March; Iran and Iraq are also part of COVAX, as are many low-income countries in the Middle East. The wealthiest Gulf states purchased their own vaccine shipments directly from the manufacturers, while some are also contributing to COVAX’s donation pool, despite suffering their own recessions: Saudi Arabia contributed $ 300 million and Qatar donated US $ 10 million.

The U.S. did not contribute to the COVAX mechanism under the Trump administration, but the Biden administration has pledged the largest donation so far – $ 4 billion.

Damluji noted the challenges of COVAX’s goals, running expansive vaccination campaigns in countries with deficient infrastructure, logistics and limited transportation options, remote populations and, in some cases, violence and war.

“This material is a moving target. Rightly, the world’s attention is focused on that and he wants to make sure that everything goes well,” he said. “But a few months ago, we didn’t even know which vaccines would work. And now people need them at the door.”

“There will be some complications that will also arise,” he added. “It is the biggest health acquisition effort ever made.”