COVID Vaccination Drives In India And China Will Stretch To Late 2022, Due To High Population

COVID vaccination programmes in India and China shall go on till late 2022 due to the huge population and over 85 poor countries shall not have proper access to vaccines before 2023, said a study according to Reuters.

The quick development of vaccines is hope for ending the pandemic which has plagued us for nearly a year. But there are concerns of unequal distribution as wealthy countries have made bilateral deals with drug companies.

US President Joe Biden said that his country aims at securing an additional 200 million doses from Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna Inc by the summer.

PTI

EU planning restrictions on COVID vaccine exports

The European Commission is forming a proposal to restrict COVID vaccine exports in the midst of frustration due to delays in deliveries of AstraZeneca¡¯s vaccine and other supply problems.

¡°Most developing countries will not have widespread access to the shots before 2023 at the earliest,¡± said Agathe Demarais, director of the Economist Intelligence Unit, the research division of the Economist Group.

¡°Some of these countries, particularly poorer ones with a young demographic profile may well lose the motivation to distribute vaccines, especially if the disease has spread widely or if the associated costs prove too high,¡± he added.

IANS

Africa shall see most of its countries not getting widespread vaccination coverage until early 2023, while many Asian countries will have it by late 2022.

The report said vaccine deliveries to the poorer countries by global vaccine sharing scheme COVAX, backed by WHO, could happen as a result of delays in delivery to wealthy nations first and the lack of infrastructure in the developing world.

COVAX said 1.8 billion doses would be supplied to 92 poorer countries in 2021 which would correspond to around 27% coverage of the populations there.