COVID-19 vaccines
Back of the line: Charity only goes so far in world vaccines
An international system to share coronavirus vaccines was supposed to guarantee that low and middle-income countries could get doses without being last in line and at the mercy of unreliable donations.
It hasn’t worked out that way. In late June alone, the initiative known as COVAX sent some 530,000 doses to Britain – more than double the amount sent that month to the entire continent of Africa.
Under COVAX, countries were supposed to give money so vaccines could be set aside, both as donations to poor countries and as an insurance policy for richer ones to buy doses if theirs fell through. Some rich countries, including those in the European Union, calculated that they had more than enough doses available through bilateral deals and ceded their allocated COVAX doses to poorer countries.
But others, including Britain, tapped into the meager supply of COVAX doses themselves, despite being among the countries that had reserved most of the world’s available vaccines. In the meantime, billions of people in poor countries have yet to receive a single dose.
The result is that poorer countries have landed in exactly the predicament COVAX was supposed to avoid: dependent on the whims and politics of rich countries for donations, just as they have been so often in the past. And in many cases, rich countries don’t want to donate in significant amounts before they finish vaccinating all their citizens who could possibly want a dose, a process that is still playing out.
“If we had tried to withhold vaccines from parts of the world, could we have made it any worse than it is today?” asked Dr. Bruce Aylward, a senior advisor at the World Health Organization, during a public session on vaccine equity.
Other wealthy nations that recently received paid doses through COVAX include Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, all of which have relatively high immunization rates and other means of acquiring vaccines. Qatar has promised to donate 1.4 million doses of vaccines and already shipped out more than the 74,000 doses it received from COVAX.
The U.S. never got any doses through COVAX, although Canada, Australia and New Zealand did. Canada got so much criticism for taking COVAX shipments that it said it would not request additional ones.
In the meantime, Venezuela has yet to receive any of its doses allocated by COVAX. Haiti has received less than half of what it was allocated, Syria about a 10th. In some cases, officials say, doses weren’t sent because countries didn’t have a plan to distribute them.
Also read: The link between the COVID-19 vaccine and pregnancy
British officials confirmed the U.K. received about 539,000 vaccine doses in late June and that it has options to buy another 27 million shots through COVAX.
“The government is a strong champion of COVAX,” the U.K. said, describing the initiative as a mechanism for all countries to obtain vaccines, not just those in need of donations. It declined to explain why it chose to receive those doses despite private deals that have reserved eight injections for every U.K. resident.
Brook Baker, a Northeastern University law professor who specializes in access to medicines, said it was unconscionable that rich countries would dip into COVAX vaccine supplies when more than 90 developing countries had virtually no access. COVAX’s biggest supplier, the Serum Institute of India, stopped sharing vaccines in April to deal with a surge of cases on the subcontinent.
Although the number of vaccines being bought by rich countries like Britain through COVAX is relatively small, the extremely limited global supply means those purchases result in fewer shots for poor countries. So far, the initiative has delivered less than 10% of the doses it promised.
COVAX is run by the World Health Organization, the vaccine alliance Gavi and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a group launched in 2017 to develop vaccines to stop outbreaks. The program is now trying to regain credibility by getting rich countries to distribute their donated vaccines through its own system, Baker said. But even this effort is not entirely successful because some countries are making their own deals to curry favorable publicity and political clout.
“Rich countries are trying to garner geopolitical benefits from bilateral dose-sharing,” Baker noted.
So far, with the exception of China, donations are coming in tiny fractions of what was pledged, an Associated Press tally of vaccines promised and delivered has found.
Dr. Christian Happi, an infectious diseases expert at Nigeria’s Redeemer’s University, said donations from rich countries are both insufficient and unreliable, especially as they have not only taken most of the world’s supplies but are moving on to vaccinate children and considering administering booster shots.
Happi called on Africa, where 1.5 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, to increase its own vaccine manufacturing rather than rely on COVAX.
“We cannot just wait for them to come up with a solution,” he said.
COVAX is well aware of the problem. During its last board meeting in late June, health officials conceded they had failed to achieve equitable distribution. But they still decided against blocking donor countries from buying up supplies themselves.
At a subsequent meeting with partners, Gavi CEO Dr. Seth Berkley said COVAX intended to honor the agreements it had made with rich countries but would ask them in the future to “adjust” their allocated doses to request fewer vaccines, according to a meeting participant who spoke about the confidential call on condition of anonymity.
Among the reasons Berkley cited for Gavi’s reluctance to break or renegotiate contracts signed with rich countries was the potential risk to its balance sheet. In the last year, Britain alone has given more than $860 million to COVAX.
Meeting notes from June show that Gavi revised COVAX’s initial plan to split vaccines evenly between rich and poor countries and proposed that poor countries would receive about 75% of COVID-19 doses in the future. Without rich countries’ involvement in COVAX, Gavi said “it would be difficult to secure deals with some manufacturers.”
Also read: Moderna says vaccine 93% effective but seeks 3rd-shot in fall
In response to an AP request for comment, Gavi said the initiative is aiming to deliver more than 2 billion doses by the beginning of 2022 and described COVAX as “an unprecedented global effort.”
“The vast majority of the COVAX supply will go to low- and middle-income countries,” Gavi said in an email about its latest supply forecast. For many countries, it said, “COVAX is the main, if not the only source of COVID-19 vaccine supply.”
Spain’s donation to four countries in Latin America – its first via COVAX – reflects how even rich countries with a lot of vaccines are donating a minimum. Spain, which has injected 57 million doses into its own residents, shipped 654,000 the first week in August. The delivery totals 3% of the 22.5 million doses Spain has promised, eventually, to COVAX.
Gavi said COVAX now has enough money and pledged donations to one day cover 30% of the population of the world’s poorest countries. But it has made big promises before.
In January, COVAX said it had “secured volumes” totaling 640 million doses to deliver by July 2021, all of them under signed agreements, not donations. But by last month, COVAX had only shipped 210 million doses, 40% of which were donated.
With COVAX sidelined, vaccine donations have become something of a political contest. China has already exported 770 million doses and last week announced its own goal of sending 2 billion doses to the rest of the world by the end of the year — exactly the same amount as COVAX’s initial plan.
That’s far ahead of the rest of the world, according to the AP tally of doses. Britain has delivered just 4.7 million, far short of the 30 million pledged, and the European Union has given 7.1 million and and another 55 million through COVAX contracts.
“If the donors are not stepping forward, the people who continue to die are our people,” Strive Masiyiwa, the African Union special envoy on COVID-19 vaccine procurement, said.
The United States has so far delivered 111 million doses, less than half of what was promised. Several U.S. lawmakers from both parties argued Wednesday that the government should seize the opportunity for diplomacy by more aggressively seeking credit for the doses it ships overseas.
“I think we should make vaccines available throughout the Middle East, but I also think we should have the American flag on every vial,” said Rep. Juan Vargas, a Democrat from California, at a hearing on the state of the pandemic in the Middle East.
Even the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, recently decried Europe’s lagging in donations in geopolitical terms as a loss to China. U.S. President Joe Biden, in announcing the U.S. donations that have finally come through, similarly described the doses as a way to counter “Russia and China influencing the world with vaccines.” The White House said the United States has donated more than 110 million vaccine doses, some via COVAX.
In addition to its planned vaccine exports, China announced plans to donate $100 million to COVAX to buy more doses for developing countries.
“The key to strengthening vaccine cooperation and building the Great Wall of immunization is to ensure equitable access,” said Wang Xiaolong of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, speaking Friday after China hosted an online forum on fair vaccine distribution.
The COVAX board has agreed to go back to its basic assumptions about vaccinating the world before the end of the year. High on its list: “An updated definition of fair and equitable access.”
The link between the COVID-19 vaccine and pregnancy
Earlier this week we reported the government has decided to include pregnant and lactating women in the nationwide Covid-19 inoculation programme amid a worrying rise in Covid-19 hospital admissions across the country.
The Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) issued a notice regarding this Sunday. Although the pregnant women are now eligible for Covid-19 vaccination, they must follow some instructions before getting vaccinated, according to the DGHS.
They have to take the Covid shots from government vaccination centres with medical facilities after getting counselling from a registered physician there.
Read: Pregnant woman with Covid-19 unlikely to pass infection to newborns: Study
Pregnant women, who are unwell or suffering from chronic illness or have a history of vaccine allergy, will not be allowed to take the jabs.
Medical experts say there’s no biological reason the shots would affect fertility. And the AP reports real-world evidence offers more assurance for anyone worried about their chances of conceiving: In Pfizer’s study, a similar number of women became pregnant in the group given the vaccine as in the group given dummy shots.
Researchers are starting to study anecdotal reports of short-term changes to periods after the vaccine, but there’s no indication so far that the shots put fertility at risk, said Dr. Mary Jane Minkin, a gynecologist and professor at the Yale University School of Medicine.
Read: Pregnant, lactating women to get Covid jab: DGHS
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and obstetrician groups also recommend COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant individuals, who have a higher risk of severe illness if infected with the coronavirus. Research shows pregnant people who get the virus are more likely to be admitted to intensive care, receive invasive ventilation and die than their non-pregnant peers.
The CDC also followed tens of thousands of pregnant women who got the vaccines and found they had comparable pregnancy outcomes to pregnant women before the pandemic.
So whether you are thinking about having a baby, trying to conceive or undergoing fertility treatments, you should not delay vaccination, Dr. Denise Jamieson, chair of the department of gynaecology and obstetrics at Emory University School of Medicine, told AP.
DGHS decides to halt first dose of Moderna jabs after Aug 12
In a bid to ensure the second dose of Moderna Covid vaccine, the government has decided to halt administering its first dose after August 12.
The Department of Health Services has issued the notice after getting approval from the Director General of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) on Tuesday.
According to the notice, the administering of the first dose of Moderna vaccine will be suspended after Aug. 12 across the country.
Also read: Mass inoculation to restart Monday with Sinopharm, Tuesday with Moderna: DGHS
But in centres where the first dose of vaccine remains in stock the second dose will begin after the stock finishes.
The second doses will be sent to the vaccination centres as per the quantity soon, it said.
Besides, it also asked to start administering the second dose of Sinopharm from August 14.
The authorities concerned have been asked to take necessary steps in this regard.
Also read: Mega Covid inoculation drive begins in Bangladesh
As the ruthless Delta variant of Covid-19 keeps rising, Bangladesh on Saturday kicked off another phase of its mass vaccination drawing huge response.
With a fresh stock of vaccine doses in hand, the government’s aim is to inoculate 80% of its population, with each getting two doses administered.
Covid-19: Vaccination campaign begins at Rohingya camps
Vaccination against Covid-19 began at Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar district on Tuesday.
As part of its involvement in the vaccination programme of the government, Humanitarian Crisis Management Programme (HCMP) of BRAC organized the campaign titled ‘Covid-19 Vaccination Campaign for Rohingya Community’.
Trained nurses of BRAC gave vaccines to the Rohingyas at camps 1-East, 8-East and No. 13 in Ukhiya upazila of Cox’s Bazar.
Also read: Mega Covid inoculation drive begins in Bangladesh
The inoculation drive will take place from 9:30am to 2:30pm till August 18.
Pregnant, lactating women to get Covid jab: DGHS
The government has included pregnant and lactating women in the nationwide Covid-19 inoculation programme amid a worrying rise in Covid-19 hospital admissions across the country.
The Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) issued a notice regarding this Sunday.
Although the pregnant women are now eligible for Covid-19 vaccination, they must follow some instructions before getting jabbed, according to the DGHS.
They have to take the Covid shots from government vaccination centres with medical facilities after getting counselling from a registered physician there.
Mothers-to-be who are unwell, suffering from chronic illness or have a history of vaccine allergy will not be allowed to take the jabs.
Read: Covid vaccine seekers overwhelm Suhrawardy Hospital; chaos all around
Also, they cannot take the second dose of vaccine if an AFI case is detected among them after taking the first shot.
And expectant mums will have to provide all health information to the registered doctor before getting jabbed.
Also, doses cannot be administered without the signed approval of a guardian or vaccine recipient and counselling a physician.
However, the lactating mothers can take a Covid shot like everyone else.
Earlier, the National Immunisation Technical Advisory Group recommended the government for providing Covid vaccine to both mums-to-be and lactating mothers.
Read: Bangladesh to procure 6 crore Sinopharm vaccine doses: Minister
Expectant mums and lactating mothers were excluded from the Covid mass vaccination programme in Bangladesh from the beginning.
Earlier this year, when Covid vaccination was initiated in countries across the world mums-to-be were excluded from the programme due to a lack of safety information.
Now the UK Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend Covid vaccines for expectant mums and lactating women.
Getting vaccinated prevents severe illness, hospitalisations, and death and with the Delta variant, this is more urgent than ever, according to the CDC.
"Pregnant and recently pregnant people are more likely to get severely ill with Covid-19 compared with non-pregnant people. If you are pregnant, you can receive a Covid-19 vaccine. Getting a Covid-19 vaccine during pregnancy can protect you from a severe illness Covid-19," it added.
Mismanagement, politicization made vaccination drive a complete mess: BNP
BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on Sunday alleged that the government has politicised the mass vaccination programme by deceiving the common people.
"Our standing committee thinks the government has indulged in mass deception in the name of mass vaccination without collecting enough vaccine doses. The mass vaccination campaign has become a drive to spread mass infection due to extreme mismanagement and politicisation,” he said.
Fakhrul came up with the remarks while unveiling the decisions of a virtual meeting of BNP standing committee at a press conference at the party chairperson’s Gulshan office. The meeting was held on Saturday evening.
Also read: Covid mortality rate high for lack of treatment: BNP
He said their party policymakers urged the government to take effective measures to ensure general vaccination coming out of the process of ‘politicisation’. “We strongly condemn and protest the involvement of ruling party workers in the mass vaccination programme.”
Bangladesh records second highest 261 Covid deaths in 24 hours
With Coronavirus and its new variant posing a real danger to the public health in Bangladesh, the country came up with another shocking figure of 261 fresh deaths on Thursday.
This is the second-highest single day deaths from the viral disease in Bangladesh as Covid-19, fueled by the deadly Delta variant, continues to wreak havoc in the country.
The country has been reporting over 200 single-day fatalities for the last two weeks as it races to head off a surge in Covid-19 cases driven by the unrelenting Delta variant.
After weathering the first wave of the virus, Bangladesh's hospitals are almost overwhelmed.
The country registered 8,136 new cases on Saturday after testing 31,714 samples. It reported the highest daily Covid-19 fatality of 264 on August 5 and 16,230 infections on July 28.
As more people are falling sick with Covid-19 and dying, hospitals in Dhaka and other cities are running out of beds.
There have been 1,343,396 infections and 22,411 coronavirus-related deaths here since the pandemic began, according to the Directorate General of Health Services.
Meanwhile, the daily test positivity rate fell to 25.65 % from 26.25% on Friday, while the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a 5% or below rate.
However, the recovery rate rose to 88.89 % from 87.81% with 16,383 patients recovering from Covid-19 during this time.
Also read: Covid vaccine seekers overwhelm Suhrawardy Hospital; chaos all around
Besides, the case fatality too increased to 1.67% in the last 24 hours.
Of the recent deaths, 101 people died in Dhaka alone, the highest ever in the division.
Deaths in Bangladesh’s capital on a single day crossed the grim landmark of 100 for the first time since the pandemic began.
China pledges 2 billion vaccines globally through year’s end
Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines would be supplied to the world through this year, increasing China’s commitment as the largest exporter of the shots.
Xi’s announcement was delivered at the International Forum on COVID-19 Vaccine Cooperation, state media reported Wednesday, which China hosted virtually.
That figure likely includes the 770 million doses China has already donated or exported already since September last year, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Most of the Chinese shots have been exported under bilateral deals. It is unclear if the figure also includes the agreements with the COVAX mechanism where two Chinese vaccine manufacturers will provide up to 550 million doses.
Xi also promised to donate $100 million to the UN-backed COVAX program, which aims to distribute vaccines to low- and middle-income countries, the official Xinhua News Agency said Wednesday night.
Also read: China to continue providing vaccine aid to Bangladesh: Wang Yi
Vaccine distributions have been starkly unequal, as wealthy countries now consider issuing booster shots to their citizens and poorer nations struggle to get enough vaccines for a first dose.
“Over 4 billion vaccines have been administered globally, but more than 75% of those have gone to just 10 countries,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO Director General, at the vaccine forum.
Hundreds of millions of Chinese shots, the vast majority of which are from Sinopharm and Sinovac, have already been administered to people in many countries across the world, as many were desperate for access to any vaccine.
However the vaccines have been followed with questions and concerns, especially as the highly transmissible delta variant spread and caused the number of COVID-19 deaths to climb again.
In Indonesia, which has relied heavily on Sinovac’s shot, the government said it was planning boosters for health workers, using some of the newly delivered Moderna doses, after reports that some of the health workers who had died since June had been fully vaccinated with the Chinese shot.
Access to vaccines have not only been plagued by inequality, but also been dominated by geopolitics.
Also read: Bangladesh going to receive large Covid vaccine shipment from China soon
China has been accused of using vaccines as leverage in diplomatic dealings. In June, diplomats told The Associated Press that China threatened to withhold vaccines to pressure Ukraine into withdrawing from a statement calling for more scrutiny about how China was treating ethnic and religious minorities in the Xinjiang region.
President Joe Biden had made a point to say vaccine donations would come without “pressure for favors or potential concessions” when announcing U.S. donation plans in June.
The White House said Tuesday the U.S. had donated 110 million doses, most of which was through COVAX coordinated by Gavi, a vaccine alliance.
Japan has also stepped up its donations in the region, pledging 30 million doses of vaccine through COVAX and other channels. It has already donated several million vaccines through bilateral deals.
Taiwan was one such beneficiary of Japan’s aid, after the island faced an outbreak which stressed its health system in May and June. Taiwan had accused China, which claims the self-governing island as its own territory, of interfering in deals to buy the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Third consignment of AstraZeneca jabs from Japan to reach Dhaka Tuesday
The third consignment of AstraZeneca vaccine from Japan will arrive in Dhaka on Tuesday.
A flight of All Nippon Airways (ANA), carrying an amount of 6,16,780 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine, left the Terminal-1, Narita airport at 21:15 hrs on Monday.
The consignment is set to reach Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport Dhaka on Tuesday by Cathay Pacific cargo flight, officials said.
Also read: Bangladesh receives around 8 lakh doses of AstraZeneca vaccine
With the third consignment, the total number of dispatched vaccines from Japan as of now stands at 16,43,300.
Bangladesh to resume administering AstraZeneca jabs Monday
The government will resume administering the second dose of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines from Monday in Dhaka division.
Dr Shamsul Haque, director of the vaccination program of the Health Department informed this in the regular Covid health bulletin on Sunday
It will be administered in all centres across the country from August 7.
Also read: Preparations underway to vaccinate 1 crore people by next week: Minister
He said SMS will be sent to the people who have taken the first dose of AstraZeneca. However, those who have received SMS for the second dose earlier but have not been vaccinated will not need the SMS to take the second shot.
On Saturday, Bangladesh received the second consignment of AstraZeneca vaccine doses from Japan under the COVAX facility.
The second consignment contains 7,81,320 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine.
The third consignment that will contain 6,16,780 doses of the vaccine is scheduled to arrive here on Tuesday.
In this regard, the director said, "We'll be able to vaccinate those waiting for the second dose of this vaccine."
The government started mass vaccination through Covishield (AstraZeneca) vaccine in last February.
Also read: Covid-19: Bangladesh lowers vaccination age to 25
However, 15,21,000 people did not get the second dose of after the stock of the jabs purchased from India ran out. Around 58 lakh people received the first dose and 42 lakh people took the 2nd dose of the vaccine so far.