Rich countries on track to stockpile at least 1 billion surplus C19 vaccines
The COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t end with a vaccine. It ends when everyone can get one. But with over half of current and projected production doses of COVID-19 vaccines monopolized by a small number of wealthy countries, large swaths of the global population will be left unprotected and the virus will be allowed to circulate, unchecked and mutating, for years to come.
This analysis from ONE finds that five countries (Australia, Canada, Japan, UK, and US) plus the EU block of 27 countries could share close to 1 billion doses of leading COVID-19 vaccines with other countries and still retain enough supply to inoculate their entire populations. These excess doses alone are sufficient to vaccinate the entire adult population of Africa.
ONE is calling on Australia, Canada, Japan, the UK, the US and the EU to take the following steps to quickly share excess doses to promotes global access:
- Adopt and commit to act on the Principles for Sharing COVID-19 Vaccine Doses at the February 19 G7 Leaders Summit;
- Publicly commit to partner with COVAX to ensure equitable redistribution of shared doses at the February 19 G7 Leaders Summit;
- Develop and execute a plan to share excess doses in 2021 in parallel to implementing national vaccine campaigns; and
- Refrain from contractual provisions in bilateral deals that prevent donations.