Vaccine production and delivery across the world increased to 11 billion doses in 2021, almost double the volume of the total global market in the pre-Covid year 2019 for routine immunization. Among Covid-19 vaccines, Chinese vaccines Sinovac and Sinopharm made up the largest volume shares at 21% and 19% (2.3 billion and 2.1 billion doses) respectively and India’s Serum Institute of India made up 13% with 1.5 billion doses, UNICEF’s year in review showed. Around 1.4 billion doses of SII’s Covid-19 vaccine have been used in India alone.
The five vaccine producers – Sinovac, Sinopharm, Pfizer/BioNTech, SII, and AstraZeneca – together comprised 80% of the global vaccine market. Pfizer/BioNTech’s share stood at 18% or 2 billion doses, and AstraZeneca’s at 8% or 0.9 billion.
In contrast, in the pre-Covid era, the vaccine market for poliovirus vaccine, which was the largest global vaccine market, in 2019 was 1.5 billion dose and influenza stood at 0.5 billion doses. The data highlighted vaccine inequity marked by disproportionate distribution of Covid-19 jabs. While high-income countries received close to 200 doses per 100 inhabitants, low-income countries got only 20 doses per 100 inhabitants, a Times of India report said.
Although the World Health Organization called for a moratorium on Covid-19 booster doses until the end of 2021, rich countries drastically increased administration of boosters to fight the Omicron variant. The focus on vaccine supply agreements going forward will be on pediatric or booster doses, the report adds.
The hoarding of limited COVID-19 shots by rich countries creating virtual vaccine deserts in many poorer ones doesn’t just mean risk for the parts of the world seeing shortages; it threatens the entire globe, an Associated Press report said.
The report added that just 13% of vaccines COVAX, a global vaccine alliance, contracted for and 12% of promised donations have actually been delivered, according to calculations by the International Monetary Fund from mid-November. About a third of the vaccines dispensed by COVAX have been donations, according to the vaccine alliance known as Gavi, and the initiative is now partly a clearinghouse for those donated doses, the very situation it was set up to avoid.
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