Vaccines to poorer countries
Covax, an international program to supply Covid-19 vaccines at low or no cost to countries around the world, plans to deliver more than 300 million doses by June 30.
Even with that help, many of the world’s poorest countries are likely to lag far behind in vaccinations, and may not be able to mount any large-scale effort this year. Scientists say that could leave the entire world, even people in widely vaccinated countries, more vulnerable, at a time when worrisome new variants of the virus are spreading worldwide.
Details: Covax said on Wednesday that it hoped to ship 336 million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine to 145 countries in the first half of the year, with shipments to begin late this month or early in March. The vaccine deliveries would be among the first to reach low- and middle-income countries.
Background: Covax was set up by international organizations to try to ensure that the scramble for vaccines among rich countries did not leave poorer nations out in the cold. It has procured pledges of $6 billion, including $4 billion from the U.S., with a goal of supplying up to two billion doses to low- and middle-income nations by the end of 2021.
Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.
In other developments:
■ New Zealand’s drug regulator said on Wednesday that it had provisionally approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine but added 58 conditions, most of which require the manufacturer to supply extra data. Pfizer said last week that the first of the 1.5 million vaccines on order were expected to arrive before the end of February.
■ New research about the AstraZeneca vaccine found that it has the potential to reduce transmission of the coronavirus.
■ Iran announced that its first batch of Covid-19 vaccine, Russia’s Sputnik V, would arrive on Thursday.
The New York Times