Manila Bulletin

Covax expecting 250 million donated doses in 6-8 weeks – WHO

GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP/Xinhua) – Covax is expecting to receive 250 million donated COVID-19 vaccine doses over the next six to eight weeks, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

The influx of doses is a major boost for the scheme, which is aimed at ensuring poorer countries can access jabs and has so far delivered 152 million vaccine doses to 137 participating territories.

In a weekly operational update issued Wednesday, the WHO said that at a recent UN Crisis Management Team meeting, it "reported that there will be increased vaccine donations to the Covax facility, projecting an additional 250 million vaccines over the next six to eight weeks."

Covax is co-led by the WHO, the Gavi vaccine alliance and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, with UNICEF using its vaccine logistics expertise to handle the delivery flights.

Under Covax, the 92 poorest countries can access jabs for free, with donors covering the cost.

The Serum Institute of India plant, producing AstraZeneca doses, was supposed to be the early backbone of Covax's supply chain -- but India restricted exports to combat its own devastating coronavirus surge.

Following those delivery problems, Covax is increasingly reliant on donated doses from wealthy countries which have bought more batches than they need.

"Global vaccine demand is far outstripping supply, leaving millions of the most vulnerable unprotected, while higher vaccine coverage worldwide is one of our best shields against new variants," said Gavi chief executive Seth Berkley.

Vaccine inequity

The WHO has raged against the drastic imbalance in access to COVID-19 vaccines between rich and poor nations.

While some countries are considering vaccinating children and giving booster jabs, others have so far been unable to vaccinate the elderly – the age group most vulnerable to developing serious disease – and health care workers.

Nearly four billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been injected around the world in at least 216 territories, according to an AFP count.

In high-income countries, as categorized by the World Bank, 96.7 doses have been administered per 100 inhabitants. Most COVID vaccines need two shots to provide full protection.

That figure stands at just 1.6 doses per 100 people in the 29 lowest-income countries.

Tanzania was set to begin rolling out vaccinations on Wednesday, leaving just Burundi, Eritrea, Haiti and North Korea as the only countries yet to start their COVID-19 immunization campaigns.

On Saturday, Tanzania received delivery of its of its first doses: more than a million single-shot Johnson and Johnson vaccines donated by the United States via Covax.

In total for 2021-2022, Covax is expecting at least 610 million donated doses.

Of those, 260 million are coming from the United States, 200 million from European Union countries, 80 million from Britain and around 30 million each from Canada and Japan.

Sharp increase in COVID deaths

The global number of new COVID-19 cases is on the increase, with 3.8 million new infections confirmed in the week between July 19 and July 25, and a "sharp" jump has been reported in the number of deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

For the past week, the global number of new cases rose by 8 percent compared with the previous week, which was largely attributed to substantial increases in the Americas and the Western Pacific Regions, the WHO said in its weekly update report.

With over 69,000, the number of COVID-19 deaths reported during the period increased by 21 percent week-on-week.

Most of the new deaths were reported from the Americas and South-East Asia Regions, said the report.

The impact of COVID-19 in Africa has been relatively less severe in recent days, as in many countries there the Delta variant has not yet been detected, it said.

World News

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2021-07-30T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-07-30T07:00:00.0000000Z

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