Out of the two billion Covid-19 vaccines that have been distributed worldwide till now, 60% of it has gone to just three countries – India, China and the US, senior advisor to the WHO director Bruce Aylward made the comment at a press conference on Friday.
“This week, we will see over 2 billion doses we will probably pass the 2 billion doses landmark in terms of the number of doses of the vaccines and new COVID-19 vaccines that have actually been developed. These have been distributed now in over 212 countries”, Aylward said.
He noted that only about 0.5% of doses globally have gone to the lowest-income countries. This accounts for about 10% of the world’s population.
Through COVAX 80 million doses have been distributed so far. The global alliance for equitable vaccine distribution is about 200 million doses behind. This is because of the disruption in COVAX supplies as a result of the devastating second wave in India.
The Serum Institute of India (SII), is the key supplier of AstraZeneca doses to COVAX. However, the supply of vaccines from SII to COVAX has been impacted because of the second wave of the COVID-19 in India.
Aylward said, “We expect India SII volumes to open up again in the fourth quarter at least.” “Countries are going to fail until they start rolling out the vaccines early,” he added.