Gross inequity in vaccine access hurting; China way ahead, says WHO’s Dr Soumya Swaminathan

Dr. Swaminathan said India is also developing several vaccines, with most under clinical trials, followed by Europe and North America. (Reuters/File photo) The World Health Organisation (WHO) chief scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan is upset that despite well-thought-through and planned-in-advance initiatives like COVAX to address any potential inequity in access to vaccines globally, today, there is gross inequity of distribution and access to vaccines around the world. COVAX is an initiative put in place last year, led jointly by WHO, GAVI, and CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations).

Since we could predict this, she said, “The idea of COVAX was to have a global mechanism for fair and equitable distribution of vaccines and even supplying them free to those countries that could not afford them. This has not completely succeeded till today because the supplies into COVAX did not materialize, and a large part of that was to come from India.”

Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, the chief scientist at the World Health Organisation, spoke at a webinar organized by NIIT University on Saturday, June 12th, evening. She also interacted with NIIT University chancellor Dr. K Kasturirangan, India’s space scientist who led the panel of experts that drafted India’s National Education Policy, Rajendra Singh Pawar, founder of NIIT University, and other experts and students.

Dr. Swaminathan said, “We should have distributed 300 million doses by now but are today somewhere around 85 million, and we are hoping in the second half of the year, we will still be able to reach our goal of 2 billion doses. By the end of 2021.” She says, right now, the focus is on getting countries to share the excess doses that they have, and G7 may be making some announcements today, and the US has already announced its plans to donate vaccines through COVAX. She said India must also step up as much as possible and as quickly as possible to ensure more vaccine coverage.

She felt this is all the more important because one other factor is playing the role of some variants becoming a little more capable of evading immunity; therefore, ensuring that people get both their vaccine doses is essential. (In terms of supplies of vaccines from India under the COVAX initiative, of the 300 million amounts sought so far from Serum Institute -equally divided between the AstraZeneca and Novovax vaccines – but of this so far, Serum has been able to supply only 35 million before export curbs were put in place).

She said the critical reason,  “It is mainly because the vaccine manufacturing countries are the regions of the world that have the bulk of the vaccines – China, United States, and India. China is way ahead, with over 800 million vaccine doses already administered. Eight vaccines are being developed (as readers would know, the figure for India as of Saturday, June 12th is 250 million doses; Serum Institute alone has supplied an equal amount so far, with the bulk of it close to 200 million to the Centre and the rest between states and the private sector hospitals) apart from the  55 million doses it has exported thus far (including for COVAX and exports to other countries till export restrictions were imposed).

Dr. Swaminathan said India is also developing several vaccines, with most under clinical trials, followed by Europe and North America. The inequity in vaccine supply has also been reflected in how the road to recovery emerges. Things in Europe and North America, Dr. Swaminathan said, were getting back to normal, with between 40 to 60 percent of the population receiving at least one dose of the vaccine and about 30 percent getting two doses already. This allows people to open up the economy, and people are already planning to travel.

By contrast, she said that in Africa, less than 1 percent of people have gotten the vaccine, with even healthcare and frontline workers not yet getting the vaccines. Hence, she points to World Health Organisation’s concern over the gross inequity in vaccine distribution and access. “While 2.2 billion doses of the vaccines have been administered worldwide, only about 55 million have been administered in Africa for its 1.3 billion population.” Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, the chief scientist at the World Health Organisation, spoke at a webinar organized by NIIT University, which has Dr. K Kasturirangan, India’s space scientist and one who led the panel of experts that drafted India’s National Education Policy. It was called Covid and You.

Referring to the pandemic as a bolt from the blue for many nations with all earlier parameters to judge preparedness going for a toss, she said one of the lessons was that many of the metrics that had been used earlier to assess and rank preparedness all proved worthless with some nations that were ranked among the highest ending up suffering the highest deaths per capita.