Australia has only delivered 6% of the 60 million vaccines pledged through the COVAX initiative.
Developing countries have been hit with an endless tide of inadequate gestures and broken promises from rich countries and pharmaceutical companies, who are failing to deliver billions of doses they promised while blocking the real solutions to vaccine inequality, according to a new report published today by the People’s Vaccine Alliance.
The report, A Dose of Reality, found that of the 1.8 billion COVID vaccine donations promised by rich nations only 261 million doses – 14% – have been delivered to date, while western pharmaceutical companies have delivered only 12% of the doses they allocated to COVAX, the initiative designed to help low and middle-income countries get fair access to COVID vaccines.
The Australian government, which only recently backed calls from countries like South Africa and India for a patent waiver to suspend rules on intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines and other coronavirus-related medical equipment, has only delivered 3.4 million – or 6% – of the 60 million doses it has promised to poorer nations. Meanwhile, it has purchased 500,000 doses of Pfizer from COVAX despite extreme vaccine shortages in developing countries and having now secured enough doses for Australians from direct deals with pharmaceutical companies. By comparison, New Zealand has delivered 25% of the 1.6 million doses it promised.
The EU and other rich nations have refused to support the proposal of over 100 nations to waive patents on vaccines and COVID related technologies while leading pharmaceutical companies have failed to openly share their technology with the World Health Organisation to enable developing countries to make their own vaccines and save lives.
Germany, another country blocking the waiver, has delivered 12% of the 100 million doses it promised, and France has delivered just 9% of the 120 million it pledged. The US has delivered the most doses – nearly 177 million doses – however this is just 16% of the 1.1 billion promised.
The Alliance said that while COVAX failed to acknowledge that relying on pharmaceutical companies may not deliver doses, the companies have undermined the initiative, first by not allocating it enough doses and second, by delivering far less than they agreed. Of the 994 million doses allocated to COVAX by Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Oxford/AstraZeneca, and Pfizer/BioNTech, only 120 million -12%- have actually been delivered, which is fifteen times less than the 1.8 billion doses delivered to rich countries from these companies. Both Johnson & Johnson and Moderna are yet to deliver a single dose they promised to the initiative.
Oxfam Australia Chief Executive Lyn Morgain said: “The failure of rich country donations and the failure of COVAX have the same root cause – we have given over control of vaccine supply to a small number of pharmaceutical companies, who are prioritising their own profits.
“These companies aren’t producing enough to vaccinate the world, they are artificially constraining the supply, and they will always put their rich customers at the front of the line.
“The only way to end the pandemic is to share the technology and know-how with other qualified manufacturers so that everyone, everywhere can have access to these lifesaving vaccines.”
During the UN General Assembly in September, President Biden rallied support for the goal to vaccinate 70% of people in every country by September 2022. While this target is rightly ambitious, the People’s Vaccine Alliance says it should be achieved much more quickly, and there is still no plan to achieve it.
Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS, said: “Rich nations and corporations are shamefully failing to deliver on their promises whilst blocking the actual solution; ensuring developing nations have the ability to make their own vaccines.
“It is painfully clear that the developing world cannot rely on the largesse and charity of rich nations and pharmaceutical companies, and hundreds of thousands of people are dying from COVID-19 as a result. This is beyond appalling.”
The WHO stated that it must be a global priority to get doses to developing countries by the end of this year, but the Alliance says rich countries are not listening and working to a timetable of delivering an inadequate supply of doses by some time in 2022, which is likely to lead to countless unnecessary deaths.
Maaza Seyoum, of the African Alliance and People’s Vaccine Alliance Africa, said: “Across the world health workers are dying and children are losing parents and grandparents. With 99% of people in low-income countries still not vaccinated, we have had enough of these ‘too little too late’ gestures.
“Governments must stop allowing pharmaceutical companies to play god while raking in astronomical profits and start delivering actual action that will save lives.”
To deflect growing pressure to share their vaccine technology free of intellectual property restrictions, leading western pharmaceutical corporations have consistently over-exaggerated their projected production volumes, claiming there will soon be enough for everyone while delivering the overwhelming majority of their stock to rich nations. Collectively, the four companies claimed they would manufacture an estimated 7.5 billion vaccines in 2021, yet with less than three months until the end of the year, they have only delivered half of these. Forecasts suggest the companies will produce 6.2 billion vaccines by the end of the year, a shortfall on their projections of more than 1.3 billion doses.
With a week to go before leaders meet for the G20 summit in Rome, The People’s Vaccine Alliance – which has 77 members including Oxfam, ActionAid, the African Alliance, Global Justice Now and UNAIDS – is calling on them to stop breaking their promises to vaccinate the world and to:
- Suspend intellectual property rights for COVID vaccines, tests, treatments, and other medical tools by agreeing to the proposed waiver of the TRIPS Agreement at the World Trade Organisation.
- Demand, and use all their legal and policy tools to require pharmaceutical companies to share COVID-19 data, know-how, and technology with the WHO’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool and South Africa mRNA Technology Transfer Hub.
- Invest in decentralised manufacturing hubs in developing countries to move from a world of vaccine monopolies and scarcity to one of vaccine sufficiency and fairness in which developing countries have direct control over production capacity to meet their needs.
- Immediately redistribute existing vaccines equitably across all nations to achieve the WHO target of vaccinating 40% of people in all countries by the end of 2021 and 70% of people in all countries by mid-2022.
