According to Bloomberg News, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organizations’ director-general revealed a “shocking imbalance” as far as vaccine supplies are concerned. He said that it was not agreeable that the manufacturers aiming for higher prices had made available the vaccines only to the rich countries. And now they are trying to push the booster shots to the same wealthy nations. He said that he was not seeing the kind of commitment he had anticipated from the developers of these vaccines.
Chief executive of Pfizer Inc Alberta Bourla and his company’s miracle shot has been availed by more than a billion people who stated that the behavior of Tedros was “emotional“. However, Tedros said that he was not being emotional but went on to say that on an urgent basis, there is more need for inoculation for many more.
A bare truth was, however, revealed related to the inequality of vaccines. It was found out that vaccine inequality resulted due to the decisions taken by the government officials and the corporate executives and did not happen on its own. Even after a year from the time the first vaccine was pushed into the arms, there still lies a vast disparity in western vaccine producers, and as result, the public health officials are finding it hard to come to the common ground so that the gap could be narrowed down between some of the nations. Only 6% of the people residing in Africa have been fully vaccinated as of early November. An important aspect related to the same is to find out who is controlling the secret formulae of the vaccines that are worth billions of dollars.
The implications of the imbalance that exists in the global supply are evident. The Americans and Europeans have already started to put behind the pandemic but in most parts of the world, coronavirus is still taking lives. Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson started on similar notes a year back by making available most of the vaccine doses to the richer countries instead of the poor ones. However, data by Airfinity reveals that they went their ways later.
Moderna, which usually had never produced any licensed drug before it did for covid hardly expanded from making their supplies available to wealthy countries until of late and due to restrictions related to export and commitments related to early supply to Europe and the United States, Chief Executive officer Stephane Bancel November 1st to Bloomberg news.
Johnson & Johnson‘s single-dose vaccine that came into the market quite late after the other three was only a small player. AstraZeneca that initially promised to sell the vaccines at cost during the pandemic put an effort to ramp up the supplies to the poorer nations by licensing the formula to one of the producers in India.
Pfizer along with its German partner, BioNTech, which is based in New York produces and is distributing the largest supply of one of the vaccines that are the most effective and that which is expected to generate $36 billion in revenue this year. Bloomberg News reports stats that as per distribution data, Pfizer is the No.1 source of vaccine for the wealthiest countries. Pfizer further strengthened its position by declaring that it had developed a covid pill in early November that would be able to reduce the incidence of hospitalization and deaths by 89%. It has not yet divulged the price or how it intends to distribute the covid pill but as production is limited in the near term, the vaccine will continue to play an instrumental role in the fight against covid.
Of late, Pfizer has started ramping up delivery of vaccines faster to the nations beyond the richest nations. As of November 7th, the company has already sent more than 658 million doses to the middle- and low-income countries of the 2 billion delivered, as per the company statement Bloomberg News reports. By the end of the current year, it says that it anticipates that the figure might attain the 1.1 billion doses out of the 3 billion produced mark.
However, there is one aspect that the chief executive officer of Pfizer will not budge and that is his company’s secret vaccine formula. Countries like South Africa have approached the WTO or World Trade Organization to waive off intellectual property right for the treatment and covid vaccines.
Bourla is the most outspoken related to the IP rights and calls it “blood of the private sector” and has resisted the call about sharing the secret formula of the vaccine technology.
Katherine Tai, the U.S Trade Representative announced early May that Biden Administration will extend support to the IP waiver.
The next month Pfizer has agreed to sell 500 million doses to the US at a cost for distributing the same to the countries with low income.
For the poorer countries, Bourla’s message has been to be quicker and buy the product that he claims to be selling at a sliding scale. For the richer nations, Bourla has made a comparison between his shot to that of a takeaway meal or approximately $20. He said that it is half the cost for middle-income countries and at the right cost for the other nations, reports Bloomberg News.
