London - Sana
A group of disease experts has warned that developing new vaccines against Covid 19 will fail to end the Coronavirus pandemic unless all countries get doses in a fast and fair way.
Sky News reported that at a time when several countries are considering adopting the idea of a vaccine passport when resuming international travel, experts said in an open letter published by the Lancet medical journal ... that storing vaccines in wealthier countries will only prolong the global health emergency, warning against Vaccine monopoly could lead to the failure of the Kovacs initiative, which aims to deliver vaccines to low- and middle-income countries facing massive dose shortages.
The chief author of the letter, Olivier Waters of the London School of Economics and Political Science, explained that the stark reality is that the world now needs greater doses of vaccines against Covid 19 than any other vaccine in history in order to immunize enough people to achieve global immunity and unless the vaccines are distributed more often. In fairness, years may pass before the Coronavirus is controlled globally.
The letter pointed out that although there are more than 20 vaccines against Covid 19 under development or approved for use, low-income countries still face enormous logistical challenges to purchase vaccines and give them to the population, including a lack of funds to purchase vaccines as well as poor infrastructure for transporting and storing them, especially since the vaccines are currently available in The market needs to be kept in a very cold place.
The letter indicated that based on available figures, rich countries that represent 16 percent of the world's population have received 70 percent of the vaccinations, which is enough to vaccinate each of their citizens several times.
The letter called on manufacturers to accelerate the transfer of technology to developing countries to help them produce the doses locally, in addition to reducing the prices of the expensive vaccines currently on the market.
The authors of the message pointed out that once the vaccines developed by China, India and Russia obtain a license from the World Health Organization, these vaccines can help poor countries to a large extent because their supplies and storage are simpler than the alternative American and European vaccines.
