Infographic – Rich Nations Buy Most Covid-19 Vaccines

Click on image for full-size view (Statista)

12 Dec. 2020. Among the top news items yesterday, in a most newsworthy day, is the Food and Drug Administration’s first emergency authorization of a vaccine to prevent Covid-19 infections, by drug maker Pfizer and German biotech company BioNTech. Also in vaccine news yesterday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services purchased another 100 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine made by Moderna, which will be the next vaccine reviewed by FDA for an emergency clearance.

The global anti-poverty advocacy group Oxfam International says in a report this week that these purchases by the U.S. and other rich nations are grabbing the bulk of the Covid-19 vaccine doses, leaving the rest of the world behind. The business research company Statista displays Oxfam’s data in a chart published on Thursday, posted today as this weekend’s infographic. Oxfam based its report on data from the science informatics company Airfinity.

The chart and Oxfam’s report show the U.S., European Union, and five other countries, representing 14 percent of the world’s population, already bought up 53 percent of initial supplies of Covid-19 vaccine doses. Some 70 other countries, says Oxfam, will only be able to vaccinate one in 10 of its citizens next year, leaving the rest of those populations to wait until 2022 for their vaccine doses.

As reported in Science & Enterprise in October, a group called Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is coordinating the Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access, or Covax facility backed by World Health Organization, European Union, and non-government organizations to provide worldwide equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines. In September, however, the U.S. announced it would not take part in Covax. Oxfam is urging the incoming Biden Administration to reverse that decision.

More from Science & Enterprise:

• University Halts Covid-19 Vaccine Trials
• Covid-19 Vaccine Shown Effective, Temperature-Stable
• Trial Shows Covid-19 Vaccine Safety, Immune Response

Disclosure: The author owns shares in Pfizer.

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