COVID-19 vaccine for poor countries

The US company plans to supply up to 500 million doses of its proprietary mRNA vaccine to the COVAX Facility, which orders and distributes COVID-19 vaccines globally. With the delivery, the company aims to contribute to ending the COVID-19 pandemic in the world’s 92 lowest-income countries.

However, only 34 million doses will be delivered this year. COVAX has the option to procure 466 million additional doses in 2022 at the lowest tier price.

The unequal treatment of the first and third world in terms of vaccine supply has been  strongly criticised by the WHO and the members of the ACT Accelerator. From the organisations’ point of view, it would make sense to vaccinate everywhere in the world at the same time in order to leave as little room as possible for the development of vaccine-resistant variants. Currently, vaccination is progressing rapidly in North America and Europe, while so far only 1% of the vaccine doses produced have been delivered to countries in the global South