we’re not safe until we’re all safe: canada must live up to global vaccine commitments

as of oct. 27,  63.5 per cent  of people living in high-income countries have been vaccinated with at least one dose of a covid-19 vaccine versus fewer than five per cent of those living in low-income countries. high-income countries have had to increase their health-care spending by only 0.8 per cent to cover the cost of vaccinating 70 per cent of their populations, whereas low-income countries would need to increase their health-care spending by a  whopping 56.6 per cent to do the same .

canada is one of the wealthy countries participating in covax. so far, we have  committed to donating  50 million doses from our own contracts as well as donating $500 million, covering the purchase of 87 million more doses but are not expected to meet this target until the end of 2022. we also will be donating  18 million doses  of the astrazeneca and  10 million doses  of the johnson and johnson vaccine now that mrna vaccines are considered preferential.

as of oct. 31, of the 1.3 billion doses wealthy countries have pledged to donate,  only 356 million doses  have been provided to covax. covax amc is also far from reaching its target of $3.2 billion for 2021. canada, appallingly, has only donated about  3.5 million doses  so far – 2.7 million to covax and another 750,000 that were not part of the covax umbrella via bilateral agreements with countries in latin america and the caribbean.

last week, gavi and unicef launched a  public plea : “we urgently need countries to deliver these doses to help protect people and health systems.” clearly, the system is not working.

while covax attempts to meet the short-term need, a longer-term strategy to encourage and support domestic vaccine production in low- and middle-income countries is necessary. pharmaceutical manufacturers that own most of the approved covid-19 vaccines, many of which have received a  large amount of public funding dollars , not only have a monopoly on their production but benefit from a lack of transparency on bilateral agreements, confidential price discounts and vaccine nationalism. this only further exacerbates the striking difference between the haves and the have nots.

recent data shows rich countries have given out  more boosters  in the last three months than poor countries have given total doses all year. many countries have begun giving boosters to their entire populations. it is a travesty that in many countries, health-care workers and high-risk groups have not yet received a single dose of the vaccine while we have already boosted entire populations at low risk of severe illness with two doses.

canada currently expects an abundance of covid-19 vaccines to be delivered by the end of 2021 – sufficient to provide boosters for all those who need one, as well as to vaccinate children under the ages of 12 and those still needing first and second doses. in addition,  canada expects  to receive another 35 million doses of the pfizer covid-19 vaccine in 2022, with options to purchase up to 30 million more; and 20 million doses of the moderna vaccine, with options for up to 15 million more.

as the  omicron variant  is showing us, we aren’t safe until we’re all safe. high rates of transmission result in new mutations and variants. this tends to occur in countries with uncontrolled spread due to a lack of access to vaccines. newer variants have generally resulted in higher transmissibility or virulence, and often also enhanced immune-evasion capabilities; this can subsequently impact the effectiveness of our vaccines.