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May 5, 2021 | The Washington Post

Authoritarian countries will try to use coronavirus vaccines as an internal cudgel

The world will have to work to keep distribution of scarce lifesaving resources equitable
May 5, 2021 | The Washington Post

Authoritarian countries will try to use coronavirus vaccines as an internal cudgel

The world will have to work to keep distribution of scarce lifesaving resources equitable

While the United States races to vaccinate its entire adult population against the coronavirus, poor countries struggle to inoculate even their most vulnerable citizens. The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, reports that 1 in 4 residents of wealthier countries has been vaccinated — but only 1 in 500 in low-income nations. “Vaccine equity is the challenge of our time. And we are failing,” Tedros said. “This is not just a moral outrage,” he said, but a prescription for disaster, as the pandemic breeds new variants of the coronavirus with the potential to evade the current vaccines.

Unjust as it may be, the scarcity of vaccines in poor countries was widely anticipated. As early as April 2020, the World Health Organization partnered with three other global health organizations to establish the Covax initiative to promote vaccine equity. President Biden announced a $2 billion U.S. contribution to Covax during his first month in office, and total donations now stand at $6.6 billion.

But the initiative is already falling behind schedule. Covax had planned to deliver 100 million doses by mid-April, but it shipped only 40 million, according to Tedros. The goal of delivering 2 billion doses by the end of the year seems increasingly implausible. The main challenge is that there are just not enough vaccine doses to buy.

Issues:

Issues:

China Egypt International Organizations Iran Iran Human Rights North Korea Syria

Topics:

Topics:

Antony Blinken Arabs Bashar al-Assad Beijing Damascus Deir ez-Zor Donald Trump Egypt Ethiopia European Commission Germany Iran Islamic republic Joe Biden Kurds North Korea Syria Tehran Turkey United States Washington World Health Organization