Mary Wilson
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Kai Kupferschmidt
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Science 25 Sep 2020:
Vol. 369, Issue 6511, pp. 1553
DOI: 10.1126/science.369.6511.1553
The World Health Organization (WHO) this week announced advances in its effort to ensure the entire world, not just wealthy countries, will benefit from successful COVID-19 vaccines. It reported that 156 countries have joined its plan to buy and distribute the vaccines. It also unveiled a mechanism through which it plans to allocate vaccine doses, aiming “to end the acute phase of the pandemic by the end of 2021.”
“It is a huge success to have the equivalent of 64% of the world's population signed up,” says Alexandra Phelan, a global health specialist at Georgetown University. But China, Russia, and the United States are absent from the list of partners in WHO's plan, known as the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) Facility. Their absence reflects “the deeply unequal power dynamics in global health,” Phelan says. It poses financial challenges for the plan and raises fears that some high-income countries will hoard early vaccine supplies for their own populations. WHO is also grappling with how to fairly share what, at first, is sure to be an inadequate supply of vaccine.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6511/1553
See all authors and affiliations
Science 25 Sep 2020:
Vol. 369, Issue 6511, pp. 1553
DOI: 10.1126/science.369.6511.1553
The World Health Organization (WHO) this week announced advances in its effort to ensure the entire world, not just wealthy countries, will benefit from successful COVID-19 vaccines. It reported that 156 countries have joined its plan to buy and distribute the vaccines. It also unveiled a mechanism through which it plans to allocate vaccine doses, aiming “to end the acute phase of the pandemic by the end of 2021.”
“It is a huge success to have the equivalent of 64% of the world's population signed up,” says Alexandra Phelan, a global health specialist at Georgetown University. But China, Russia, and the United States are absent from the list of partners in WHO's plan, known as the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) Facility. Their absence reflects “the deeply unequal power dynamics in global health,” Phelan says. It poses financial challenges for the plan and raises fears that some high-income countries will hoard early vaccine supplies for their own populations. WHO is also grappling with how to fairly share what, at first, is sure to be an inadequate supply of vaccine.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6511/1553