News: September 27

The World Is at War With Covid. Covid Is Winning. the race to vaccinate the world against Covid has unfolded like a symphony without a conductor ...... More than 80 percent of the four billion vaccine doses that had been distributed as of early August went to high- and upper-middle-income countries. ........... The People’s Vaccine Alliance estimated in June that

at the current pace, it would take 57 years for low-income countries to vaccinate their entire populations

. High-income countries will do so within the next six months (hesitancy notwithstanding). ............ This month, the global vaccine-sharing initiative known as Covax cut its projections by nearly 30 percent, saying it would have available only 1.4 billion doses by the end of this year. (The initiative has delivered just 271 million doses so far.) Later, President Biden reassured Americans that the United States had enough shots on hand to offer boosters to all its residents. The World Health Organization has been pleading with wealthy nations to hold off on boosters — and to forgo some of their planned vaccine purchases — until the rest of the world has a chance to secure more first doses. ...........

“We were promised a war effort, and instead we got a pillow fight.”

........... While the world dithers, the virus is evolving.

Given enough time and enough unvaccinated people, it could mutate its way past our best defenses, potentially sending the world — vaccinated and unvaccinated alike — back to square one.

......... “rich countries behaved worse than anyone’s worst nightmare.” They bypassed Covax — either completely or by slow-walking their financial contributions — cut multiple deals directly with vaccine manufacturers and bought up many more shots than they would need, long before any had been authorized for use. As a result, not only did Covax never amass the purchasing power at the heart of its plan, but also by the time the initiative secured enough funds to start buying shots, it was at the end of a long queue. ...........

Group of 7 countries are entitled to more Covax doses by the end of this year than they have pledged to donate to the initiative

. ........... the vast majority of doses pledged by Group of 7 countries in July have yet to be delivered. Also, the shots are only one item on a roster of needs that must be met for vaccination to succeed. Transportation, electricity for cold storage, trained health workers for vaccine administration and campaigns to combat hesitancy all need to be bolstered. .......... regional facilities would make it possible to create shots within 100 days of dangerous diseases emerging and to stop outbreaks before they mushroom into pandemics. Public Citizen estimated that it would take $25 billion, and about six months, to establish a network of such hubs around the world and that if officials started today, the world could have billions more doses by this time next year. .......

the biggest hurdle, by far, appears to be the obstinacy of the world’s leading vaccine makers, which have largely refused to share their technology, even when it was developed with public money.

............... Russia, for example, managed to transfer its technology to scores of smaller companies, including in the global south, in a matter of months ........ The country’s strategy was to not only license its intellectual property but also to send its experts to those companies to show them what to do. ........... a recombinant protein vaccine. It can be grown efficiently in yeast cells, has no onerous storage requirements and should be easy to mass-produce anywhere .......... a vaccine manufacturing facility that can fit inside a shipping container and could theoretically be deployed almost anywhere in the world .......... simpler technology for making mRNA vaccines: Rather than produce the necessary components through a complicated string of in vitro processes, the company grows them in E. coli bacteria ........... To resolve a collective action conundrum, she said, you need two things: a concrete goal and a convincing sales pitch. ......... Vaccinating the world against Covid will cost a lot of money, but almost any amount of money will be worth it.

The pandemic has caused the global economy to contract by trillions of dollars and will cost the world trillions more if it’s allowed to fester.

........ The president should also support

the NOVID Act, a bill that would authorize spending some $34 billion on the global vaccination effort, and direct his administration to spend the $16 billion or so that Congress has already allocated for that purpose

. Only a tiny fraction of that money has been put to use so far, an unconscionable missed opportunity. ........ The United States has untapped leverage with Moderna. The government helped pay to develop the company’s intellectual property and holds a patent on and contractual rights to it. The United States also has leverage with Johnson & Johnson, which the government paid more than $1 billion for advance purchases and research support. One idea, reported on by Nature: Nudge Johnson & Johnson to make use of factories that are currently making the Sputnik V shot, which is similar to the Johnson & Johnson shot but has run into manufacturing troubles. ........... set aside geopolitics and work with China and perhaps Russia to validate their vaccines for broader use ........ China’s vaccine producers Sinovac and Sinopharm have pledged to export two billion doses by the end of this year ......... “But the United States is supposed to stand for something bigger than just taking care of its own citizens.”

Rich Countries Worry About Booster Shots. They Should Be Worried About Africa. there’s no conclusive evidence to justify giving boosters to fit, healthy people. Third doses should be given only to the small number of people facing a high risk of severe illness and death, despite being fully vaccinated, including those with compromised immune systems. ......... Nine months after the arrival of the first vaccine, just 20 percent of people in low- and lower-middle-income countries have received a first dose — compared with 80 percent in many high- and upper-middle-income countries. .......... Today, just 51 million people — or 3.6 percent — of Africa’s population are fully vaccinated, compared with over 60 percent in the United Kingdom and the European Union and almost 55 percent in the United States. ......... Just 15 percent of the more than one billion doses pledged by high-income countries have arrived in Africa so far.

Wealthy countries must let go of reserved doses and cede their place in the queue, allowing Covax and the African Union to buy the vaccines the continent seeks and stands ready to finance.

..........

giving boosters to fully vaccinated individuals goes against rich countries’ own interests. Countries with low vaccination rates could act as variant incubators, increasing the risk that more dangerous variants will emerge and enter international travel networks.

................ We have already seen the havoc caused by the Delta variant. Now present in 180 countries, this highly transmissible variant is leading to rising deaths in many rich nations. ......... Global economic losses due to delayed vaccinations may, according to one estimate, run into the trillions of dollars in the coming years if low- and middle-income countries cannot quickly vaccinate most of their people. The International Monetary Fund recently cited access to vaccines as the “principal fault line” along which the global economic recovery is diverging. If vaccine inequity persists, growth rates in poorer countries may not return to prepandemic levels until 2024.

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