(ANSA) - GENEVA, 02 MAR - The World Health Organization has planned the distribution of 238.3 million doses of vaccine to be distributed to the poorest countries in the world by the end of May as part of the Covax program.
Pakistan, Nigeria and Indonesia will be among the largest recipients of free vaccines: they will receive over 10 million doses each.
WHO, co-leader of the Covax program, wants to speed up the operation as much as possible, convinced that providing vaccines to all countries is the only way out of the pandemic.
The scheme that aims to guarantee equal access to vaccines against Covid-19 provides for the priority sending of most of the doses available to Pakistan (14,640,000), Nigeria (13,656,000), Indonesia (11,704,800), Bangladesh ( 10,908,000) and Brazil (9,122,400).
Followed by Ethiopia (7,620,000), the Democratic Republic of Congo (5,928,000), Mexico (5,532,000), Egypt (4,389,600) and Vietnam (4,176,000).
Iran, Burma, Kenya and Uganda are also lined up for over three million doses each.
Overall, India will get the largest share of vaccines by May but its allocation is not yet finalized.
Shipments include approximately 237 million doses of the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine, in production in India and South Korea, and an additional 1.2 million doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, which requires special storage at very low temperatures.
The scheme aims to distribute sufficient doses to vaccinate up to 27% of the population in the 92 poorest participating economies by the end of the year.
Most developed countries procured the vaccines themselves.
So far, about 260 million doses of the vaccine have been administered worldwide.
(HANDLE).
