60 percent of two billion vaccine doses gone to India, the US and China: WHO
New Delhi: Senior adviser at the World Health Organisation (WHO) – Bruce Aylward on Friday declared the important information of the distribution of coronavirus vaccine doses. Aylward said that “Of the two billion COVID-19 vaccine doses distributed globally till now, about 60 percent have gone to just three countries – the US, India, and China.”
Bruce Aylward is a Canadian physician and epidemiologist and also Senior Advisor to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Aylward added that “Vaccines have been distributed now in over 212 countries. If we look at that two billion doses, over 75 percent of it has gone to just 10 countries. And in fact three countries – China, the US, and India – account for about 60 percent of those doses,”
On the COVAX vaccine, he said that “COVAX has played an important role in distributing the COVID-19 doses to 127 countries and getting several countries to start their vaccination drives.”
Aylward expressed worries through his words and said “only about 0.5 percent of doses globally have gone to the lowest income countries that account for about 10 percent of the world’s population.”
Aylward said about 80 million doses have been distributed through COVAX so far and the global alliance for equitable vaccine distribution is about 200 million doses behind where it should be due to the disruption in COVAX supplies as a result of the devastating second wave in India.
The problem now is the supplies are being interrupted. We’re having disruptions because of the problems in India and others and having trouble filling that gap.
“We saw how long it took to get the scale-up of vaccines in high-income countries. It takes a consistent supply of vaccines. So this is the crucial piece that we’ve got to fix in the next two months if we are going to be on track to get out of the pandemic,” Aylward said.
