Nearly 6.8 billion doses of potential Covid-19 vaccines have already been sold. This figure does not take into account the 2.8 billion additional doses currently under negotiation.
Rich countries have pre-ordered more than 2 billion doses. Middle-income countries such as India, Indonesia and Brazil have signed up for 2.4 billion doses.
At this rate, two-thirds of the world's population will not have access to vaccines until 2022. As evidence of this, 1.1 billion doses out of the 1.3 billion that will be produced by Pfizer/BioNTech in 2021 have already been reserved.
With this two-tier system, the populations of poor countries will be the main victims.
To purchase vaccines for poor populations, an international pooling system called Covax has been set up. This initiative brings together WHO, the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi).
Covax hopes to acquire 2 billion doses to vaccinate 20% of the population of the 160 signatory countries. The first half of the stock will be distributed free of charge to the poorest countries, while the second half will be reserved for countries with slightly more resources.
As a result of this initiative, 600 million doses of vaccine have been pre-ordered from nine laboratories. Unfortunately, funding is limited and the program has been boycotted by the United States.
Covax hopes to find a compromise with some countries to recover some of their surplus vaccine. Some governments have pre-ordered vaccine in quantities which exceed by far their population. Canada, for example, has signed up for five times the number of doses needed for its population.
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