Poorer countries lack vaccines amid surge

MANY low-income countries lacking sufficient access to Covid-19 vaccines are seeing surges in cases, while almost 90% of all vaccine doses have been administered in high-income countries, according to a recent analysis.

Global humanitarian aid organisation, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), says analysis shows that 87% of Covid-19 vaccine doses have been distributed in wealthier countries despite surging cases in conflictaffected countries whose health systems are strained.

With the release of the final research report by the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response this week, the IRC is calling for G7 and G20 countries to commit excess vaccine doses and funding to crisis-affected countries.

Less than 0.1% of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Libya, Niger, South Sudan and Cameroon have been vaccinated, the IRC said. Some countries, such as Chad, Burkina Faso, Tanzania and north-east Syria, have administered no vaccine doses.

Due in part, to the spread of more deadly and more transmissible variants, Covid-19 cases are surging in crisis-affected states, including the Central African Republic (CAR) at 24%, Cameroon at 21% and Colombia with 20%, among other countries.

According to the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef), although the CAR has registered a relatively low number of Covid-19 cases, the indirect impact of the virus has been severe.

It said a significant decrease of immunisation rates was observed, due to the challenges faced in conducting routine immunisation. The pandemic has also resulted in the closure and disruption of services for forcibly displaced children and victims of violence, including by armed groups.

Incidents of gender-based violence against children spiked at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and during school closures.

The country has recently signed with the Covax facility. The vaccines are expected to be delivered soon.

The country has recorded 6 866 confirmed cases, 95 Covid-19-related deaths and 5 112 recoveries since the first case was reported in March last year.

In Cameroon, only 40 000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered since the middle of last month, Health Minister Manaouda Malachie said recently, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua.

These included 23 882 doses of China’s Sinopharm vaccine and 16 089 doses of the Astrazeneca vaccine administered as of Thursday last week in the Central African nation, the minister said on social media.

“Government is encouraging the target populations to be vaccinated for collective protection,” he said.

Malachie told a cabinet meeting that the Covid-19 situation, which had witnessed an upsurge, was stable following the vaccination campaign launched on April 12, soon after Cameroon received its first batch of Covid19 vaccines donated by the Chinese government, according to Xinhua.

The latest figures show that Cameroon has recorded 74 946 Covid-19 cases, up from 64 809 last month.

Last month, the country’s senior government officials received the first shots of the Covid-19 vaccine to encourage Cameroonians to get vaccinated.

According to Voice of America news, health-care workers said they were reluctant to take the Sinopharm coronavirus vaccines donated by China because they doubted the drug’s efficacy.

According to the IRC, the latest research also shows that countries in Latin America are seeing high death rates amid insufficient access to vaccines, with Mexico recording a case fatality rate of more than 9%, compared with a global case fatality rate of 2.1%.

While recent donations of doses to Covax will further support efforts to mitigate the impact of the pandemic in low- and middle-income countries, more needs to be done, the organisation said.

Many countries lacking sufficient access to Covid-19 vaccines are seeing major surges in cases, which continue to threaten global health security. This comes at a time when global supply chains are continuing to face disruptions that are further slowing vaccine production and distribution.

IRC senior director of health Mesfin Teklu Tessema said that as deadlier variants spread across crisis-affected countries, almost 90% of all vaccine doses had been administered in high-income countries.

“High-income countries must do more. This not only means urgently sharing excess Covid-19 vaccine doses with the Covax facility, but supporting vaccine distribution and manufacturing efforts in lower-income countries,” Tessema said. “This includes sharing Covid-19-related technology and know-how, waiving intellectual property rights to the vaccines, and funding distribution efforts. Ending restrictions on the export of Covid19 vaccines and vital ingredients is also essential, as these have already hindered an already under-resourced and overstretched global supply chain at a time when cases continue to surge and more contagious variants spread.”

The IRC said it was working to get vaccines to the people who needed them most in crisis-affected areas where health-care systems were strained and people were living in cramped conditions.

Late last month, the DRC said it would return the bulk of the Astrazeneca Covid-19 vaccines in its possession to Unicef for redistribution to other African countries, according to the Eastafrican Magazine.

The country said it would return 1.3 million of the 1.7 million doses it received through Covax in March as it did not have a vaccination plan to support a campaign of this scale, nor a sufficient number of vaccination sites, according to Unicef regional adviser Susie Villeneuve.

She said the decision was made to ensure usage of the vaccines before their June 24 expiry date.