The UK government has bought 114m more doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines even as the World Health Organization urged wealthy nations to delay booster programmes.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid vowed to “future proof” the NHS jabs drive after agreeing to buy what The Times said was “enough extra doses to repeat the entire vaccination programme to date”.
The deal was “accelerated” amid widespread concern about the Omicron variant of Covid-19, and “includes clauses giving access” to new vaccines modified to target new strains, the paper reported.
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Latest tracking showed that more than 68% of people in the UK had received two coronavirus jabs as of the start of December, while more than 32% of people aged 12 and over had received a third jab.
But the WHO has warned that “ambitious booster plans” come “at the expense of first-time vaccinations in less wealthy nations”, said The New York Times.
‘Fraught questions of equity’
At a virtual press conference this morning, WHO representatives said that only 7.5% of people were fully vaccinated across Africa, which has seen a weekly 54% rise in reported coronavirus cases.
The UN health agency’s criticisms of booster schemes reopened “fraught questions of equity” in how the world has handled the pandemic since “a stark divide over the availability of vaccines emerged between rich and poor countries earlier this year”, said the New York Times.
However, the paper predicted that the WHO was “unlikely to sway leaders” in Europe, Asia and the US, who are scrambling to further protect their citizens amid fears of a new wave of Covid.
Duke University’s Global Health Innovation Center, which has tracked confirmed vaccine purchases worldwide up to 8 November, puts the EU at the top of the ranking for procurements, with 2.9bn doses bought. The US and India follow, with 1.7bn each.
At the start of November, before the latest Pfizer and Moderna buy-up, the UK was ninth on the list, behind Brazil, Canada, Japan, the African Union and China. With the exception of Canada, all of these countries have much bigger populations that Britain.
‘Agonisingly slow’ rollout
At the other end of Duke's rankings are some countries that have purchased thousands rather than billions of vaccines.
The WHO confirmed in October that its target for all countries to vaccinate 10% of their populations by the end of the previous month had not been met. A total of “56 countries effectively excluded from the global vaccine marketplace were not able to reach this target – and most of them in Africa”, said the global health agency.
Some of these countries were battling the effects of “conflict or civil unrest, such as Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Myanmar”, said the BBC, while others “like Haiti have been hit by natural disasters, making the task of rolling out vaccines very difficult”.
But the broadcaster noted that less than 15% of more than a billion doses pledged by G7 and EU nations to the vaccine-sharing scheme Covax or directly to African countries had been delivered.
“Hoarding and production constraints are part of the story” when it comes to the “agonizingly slow” roll-out for poorer countries, said Vox. But “so are less-appreciated obstacles like clogged supply chains and breakdowns in communication between vaccine makers, donors, and recipients”.
Announcing the UK's latest vaccine procurement today, the Department of Health said the government “remains committed” to donating 100m doses to countries in need by mid-2022, with 30m to be handed over by end of this year.
