As COVID-19 vaccines began to be approved and distributed worldwide at the end of 2020, the consequences of global inequality were starkly revealed. Poorer countries now find themselves uncertain as to when they will be able to administer their first vaccinations.

Wealthy countries secured the bulk of the initial supply of vaccines through preorders placed in mid-2020, with the majority of available vaccines being distributed first to countries in Europe and North America. Of the three major vaccines which have received full approval for use, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines had promised the majority of their first round of doses to high-income countries, and the Sinopharm vaccine, which was approved for use in China, had all of its initial doses promised to upper middle-income countries.

“We need to show global cooperation, global solidarity”

Richard Kozul-Wright, director of the division on globalization and development strategies at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, expressed concern over unequal vaccine distribution in an interview with The New York Times.

“It’s clear that developing countries, and especially poorer developing countries, are going to be excluded for some time,” Kozul-Wright said. “Despite the understanding that vaccines need to be seen as a global good, the provision remains largely under control of large pharmaceutical companies in the advanced economies.”

A December 2020 report by the People’s Vaccine Alliance found that if virus distribution continues unaltered in its current state, nearly 70 poor countries would only have enough vaccines for one in 10 people by the end of 2021, in comparison with wealthier countries which would have enough doses to vaccinate their populations nearly three times over.

Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director John Nkengasong called this unequal distribution of vaccines a “moral issue” in a December press conference urging the United Nations to call a special session to address vaccine inequities.

“We need to show global cooperation, global solidarity,” Nkengasong said. “The time to translate those powerful words into action is now.”

These initial preorders have left many developing countries scrambling for support as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to break global records on a day-to-day basis. South Africa, a middle-income country with half of its population living in poverty, was deemed “too wealthy” by international organizations in charge of distributing vaccines to developing countries. As a result, experts believe the country, which has reported the most confirmed cases of COVID-19 on the continent, will not administer its first inoculation until mid-2021.

Elsewhere, prospects for a swift vaccine distribution process remain grim. The People’s Vaccine Alliance report also stated that five of the countries which are currently expected to receive enough vaccines for only one in 10 residents by the end of 2021, Kenya, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan and Ukraine, had collectively reported 1.5 million cases when the report was published last month.

The COVID-19 pandemic is not isolated in regard to having a patchwork system of global protection. Polio, which had been eradicated throughout the Western world by the mid-20th century, was only deemed eradicated in its wild form from Africa in August 2020. Tuberculosis, another disease which has been all but eliminated as a threat to life in the West, killed 1.4 million people worldwide in 2019, the majority of cases being reported in developing countries. 

In an effort to mitigate the effects that global inequality has on vaccine distribution, a number of public and private organizations have undertaken various vaccine efforts. The ACT-Accelerator Partnership, a collaboration between the World Health Organization and several philanthropic and economic organizations, seeks to facilitate the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. However, as of this article’s publication, the partnership had only received a little over $5.8 billion of its targeted $38 billion to facilitate the effort.

Other countries, like India and South Africa, are trying to circumvent problems with global vaccine distribution efforts by developing their own vaccines. These efforts, though, have largely been stalled by the World Trade Organization due to disputes regarding patent rights for the vaccines.

As of mid-January, only 41 million COVID-19 vaccinations had been administered worldwide, representing .4% of the global population.

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Jacob is a recent graduate from the University of California San Diego where he majored in Political Science and minored in Spanish Language Studies. He previously served as the News Editor for The UCSD Guardian, and hopes to shed light on social justice issues in his work.