Where have all the vaccines gone: followup
Is there any good news about Covid-19 vaccination in Africa or the Pacific?
The depressing statistics on global vaccine distribution keep on coming. Last week I talked about hearing that two thirds of vaccine doses had been given in just three countries. This week, I heard on the radio that more vaccine doses had been given in the state of Florida than had been distributed by COVAX in all of Africa. By US standards, the state of Florida is middling in terms of the percentage of its population which has been vaccinated, but because it is the third most populous state, it ranks fourth in terms of total doses given – at nearly 16 million.
I’ve tried to confirm whether this figure is correct, and it’s not at all clear. Only 29 African countries have statistics for the doses they have received on the website for GAVI – the Global Vaccine Alliance. If you add those all up, it does indeed turn out to be less than 16 million. But some countries that have received vaccine doses from COVAX, such as Egypt and Sudan, aren’t listed on that page. Once they are added in, the total doses sent by COVAX do exceed those for the state of Florida, but not by much. And the total is still less than the doses given in the states of Texas and California. At best, African nations have received enough doses from COVAX to vaccinate 1.3% of their people, and most countries have not received enough to vaccinate 1%.
But COVAX is only part of the story for Africa. While wealthy countries have hogged the supply of vaccines from North America and Europe, China and Russia have stepped in, donating some doses and offering to sell more. It’s a move that has prompted some cynicism about their motives, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that they have been more generous than many countries with much closer links with Africa.
Among African nations, the standouts when it comes to vaccination are the Seychelles and Morocco. The Seychelles, with a population of only 100,000, has vaccinated around 60% of its population, largely using the Sinopharm vaccine. But it’s Morocco, with a population of nearly 37,000,000, which is truly impressive. Using a combination of Oxford/ AstraZeneca, Sinopharm and Sputnik-V, they have fully vaccinated 12% of their population.
On the other hand, Africa is also seeing some true tragedies. Perhaps the worst is Tanzania, whose previous president took a leaf from the book of Trump and Bolsonaro. President John Magufuli spent some time denying that the virus was even present in the country, and, once he admitted it was, his Health Minister promoted the use of vegetable smoothies instead of vaccines. The situation may have improved since Magufuli died in March, as the new president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, has made some encouraging statements about a change in attitude to Covid-19. But whether that is too late to prevent disaster in a country of 60 million is uncertain.
Closer to home, Fiji was the first Pacific nation to receive vaccines from COVAX, back in March. So far, they’ve received 36,000 doses, which is enough to vaccinate 2% of their population. However New Zealand, which ordered the Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine long before deciding to use only the Pfizer/ BioNTech vaccine, has announced the donation of 260,000 doses to Fiji. It’s unclear, however, when these will arrive.
The news is less good in Papua New Guinea, where misinformation about vaccines is making many people reluctant to get vaccinated. They’ve had vaccine donated by Australia as well as 132,000 doses from COVAX, but it’s unclear how many of those doses have been given so far. According to Our World in Data, which uses official government sources of data, only 2900 doses had been given by late April.
I tried to find a good news story on Covid-19 vaccination in the Pacific region, but I couldn’t. If there is good news, it’s that most Pacific island nations have avoided the worst of the pandemic, especially those that are self-governing. But this has, of course, come at the cost of closed borders, which has devastated their economies. So, I’ve looked a little further afield and came across statistics for an often-overlooked Asian nation, Mongolia. By mid-April, it had fully vaccinated more than 16% of its population of 2 million. It ran out of vaccine then, but it has since received more vaccine from China and has now fully vaccinated 18%. While it’s good news that the Mongolian people are being vaccinated, it leaves me wondering, more than ever, what this pandemic will do for the global balance of power.
Thank you to Peter for the question that prompted this week’s article.
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