#covax

As the Associated Press reported Wednesday "the number of Covid-19 cases recorded worldwide increased by 11% last week compared with the previous week, with nearly 4.99 million newly reported from December 20-26."

"New cases in Europe—which accounted for more than half of the total—were up 3% while those in the Americas rose 39% and there was a 7% increase in Africa," AP noted. "The global gain followed a gradual increase since October."

Though data out of South Africa and elsewhere has indicated that Omicron causes less severe disease than other coronavirus strains, Tedros cautioned Wednesday that the current "tsunami" of cases "will continue to put immense pressure on exhausted health workers and health systems on the brink of collapse."

"In the year ahead, I call for leaders of government and industry to walk the talk on vaccine equity both by ensuring consistent supply and helping to get vaccinations actually into people," Tedros said. "Vaccine supply, for now at least, is improving, although the emphasis on boosters in rich countries could cause low-income countries to go short again."

"I call on leaders of rich countries and manufacturers to learn the lessons of Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and now Omicron and work together to reach the 70% vaccination coverage," he continued. "This is the time to rise above short-term nationalism and protect populations and economies against future variants by ending global vaccine inequity."

In the year since the first coronavirus vaccine dose was administered outside of a clinical trial, more than nine billion Covid-19 shots have been given worldwide—but just 8.4% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose, according to Our World in Data.

"Unless the world is vaccinated, the likelihood is there will be another variant that will be far more lethal."

Poor nations' inability to access Covid-19 vaccines has been attributed to a number of factors, from rich countries' hoarding of doses, to the pharmaceutical industry's persistent refusal to share vaccine recipes that would allow developing countries to produce generic shots for their populations.

Wealthy nations—including the U.K., Germany, and Switzerland—have helped Big Pharma maintain its profitable stranglehold on vaccine production by stonewalling a proposed patent waiver at the World Trade Organization.

Advocacy groups, meanwhile, have accused the U.S. and other powerful countries of failing to adequately invest in global vaccine manufacturing. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimated earlier this month that it would cost just $50 billion to vaccinate the world—a fraction of the $778 billion that the U.S. Congress and President Joe Biden authorized for military spending in the coming fiscal year.

In a recent op-ed, Peter Geoghegan and Anthony Barnett of openDemocracy noted that "the moment credible vaccines were developed we were informed that, for them to work, everyone needed to have them."

"Leave the poor and the crowded unvaccinated, we were told, and new variants would mutate that would find their way around the protections against the old ones," the pair wrote. "Meanwhile, up pops Omicron to say: 'Told you so,' and it proves itself to be vertically contagious."

"Universal vaccination could have prevented the viral reproduction of Covid that generates such variations," they argued. "Now, unless the world is vaccinated, the likelihood is there will be another variant that will be far more lethal."

LOOK FAMILIAR? American Red Cross Certificate of Immunity for typhoid, 3/6/1920, NARA ID 6706185.

WORLD IMMUNIZATION WEEK- related records!

By Miriam Kleiman, Public Affairs, who received her 2nd Moderna dose last Thursday.

Scary baby on WWII poster, Office of War Information, NARA ID 44266404.

President Ford gets the Swine Flu vaccine, Ford Library, NARA ID 7064718.

Vaccinations at Manzanar Japanese Internment Camp, Manzanar, CA, 4//2/1942. NARA ID 536850.

WWII poster, Office of War Information, NARA ID 44266586.

WWI Women's Motor Corps vaccinations, Feb. 1918, NARA ID 45496234.

WWI vaccinations at USNT, Seattle, WA, NARA ID 45496256.

WWII poster, Office of War Information, NARA ID 44266588.

"Vaccinating foundling children against smallpox," WWI, Vilna, Lithuania, 1917-1918. NARA ID 17391006.

Global vaccines project to revamp rules after Britain got more than Botswana

In March, as wealthy Britain led the world in vaccination rates and almost half its people had received a shot, the organisation meant to ensure fair global access to COVID-19 vaccines allotted the country over half a million doses from its supplies.

By contrast Botswana, which hadn't even started its vaccination drive, was assigned 20,000 doses from the same batch of millions of Pfizer mRNA vaccines, according to publicly available documents detailing COVAX's allocations.

Other poorer nations, with fledgling vaccination drives at best, also received fewer shots than Britain. Rwanda and Togo were each allotted about 100,000 doses, and Libya nearly 55,000.

The distribution was driven by the methodology used by COVAX, a programme co-led by the World Health Organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (Gavi). Since January, it has largely allocated doses proportionally among its members according to population size, but regardless of their vaccination coverage.

This made some rich nations, which already had many vaccines through separate deals with pharmaceutical firms, eligible for COVAX doses alongside countries with no vaccines at all.

Asked why total vaccine coverage was not used earlier as a measure, Bruce Aylward, a senior WHO and COVAX official, told Reuters that the allocation terms could not be changed without the consent of COVAX's more than 140 member countries, though he did not elaborate on the process of reaching consensus.

Yet there has been a wealth-driven inequality since before vaccines became available, with governments in London, Washington, Ottawa, Brussels and beyond, many of them COVAX members, separately securing large supplies outside the scheme.

In June, COVAX scaled back its initial ambitions of acting as a vaccine clearing house for the world to focus only on countries deemed most in need. Yet within that group it was still assigning vaccines according to the population sizes, rather than their total vaccination coverage.

Prince Harry calls for equitable distribution of Covid vaccinest

In first appearance since death of Prince Philip, Harry urges people to ‘look beyond ourselves’

Caroline Davies

Published: 11:06 Monday, 03 May 2021

The Duke of Sussex made his first public appearance since the funeral of his grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh, at a charity concert in Los Angeles to promote the equitable distribution of coronavirus vaccines worldwide.

Prince Harry urged people to “look beyond ourselves with empathy and compassion” during a speech at Vax Live, hosted by Global Citizen at the SoFi stadium before an audience of vaccinated guests.

Harry, appearing without the Duchess of Sussex, who is expecting their second child, praised the world’s frontline medical workers at the concert, which featured a host of famous names from the worlds of music, film and politics.

He pleaded for vaccines to be distributed to everyone, everywhere.

“Tonight is a celebration of each of you here, the vaccinated frontline workers in the audience and the millions of frontline heroes around the world,” he said.

“You spent the last year battling courageously and selflessly to protect us all. You served and sacrificed, put yourselves in harm’s way, and acted with bravery, knowing the costs. We owe you an incredible debt of gratitude. Thank you.”

It was Harry’s first public appearance in the US since his and Meghan’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey in March. He and Meghan are campaign chairs for the Vax Live event, which was hosted by Selena Gomez and featured musical performances from Jennifer Lopez, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, Foo Fighters, J Balvin and HER.

The event raised £38.3m ($53.8m ) for Covax, which is working to provide vaccines for low- and middle-income countries. The US president, Joe Biden, and Pope Francis were among dignitaries to send messages of support.

Messages about vaccine equity were heard from guests including Ben Affleck, David Letterman, Gayle King, Jimmy Kimmel and Sean Penn.

President Biden said in a video address that the US was “working with leaders around the world to share more vaccines and boost production to make sure every country has the vaccines they need”.

The Global Citizen co-founder and CEO, Hugh Evans, said: “Global Citizen initially set out to secure enough funding from philanthropists, the private sector and governments, to purchase 10m vaccine doses as part of our campaign. Through the amazing work of our hosts, campaign chairs, and actions taken by global citizens, I am proud that tonight we have already surpassed our goal, securing enough funding for 10.3m doses.

“And the momentum is only just building. Additional commitments are rolling in and will be announced as part of our global broadcast on 8 May. Critically we need to see the US and the UK step up and start sharing additional doses, and we need pharmaceutical companies such as Moderna to urgently provide millions of doses to Covax to the poorest countries at non-profit prices.”

Under COVAX, countries were supposed to give money so vaccines could be set aside, both as donations to poor countries and as an insurance policy for richer ones to buy doses if theirs fell through. Some rich countries, including those in the European Union, calculated that they had more than enough doses available through bilateral deals and ceded their allocated COVAX doses to poorer countries.

But others, including Britain, tapped into the meager supply of COVAX doses themselves, despite being among the countries that had reserved most of the world’s available vaccines. In the meantime, billions of people in poor countries have yet to receive a single dose.