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Governments falling woefully short on goal to vaccinate 70 percent in each country by September

Vaccine Access Still a Concern as President Biden Hosts Second COVID Summit

World leaders have not done enough to achieve their goal of vaccinating 70 percent of people in each country by September, campaigners with the People’s Vaccine Alliance warned ahead of the second virtual summit on COVID-19 hosted by US President Biden along with Belize, Germany, Indonesia, and Senegal. The World Health Organization’s target of reaching 70 percent by mid-year is even further out of reach.

More than a year after vaccines were introduced, only 52 countries have met the 70 percent vaccination target so far, 69 have yet to achieve 40 percent coverage, and 21 countries have not yet achieved even 10 percent coverage. While more than 11 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered worldwide, only 11 percent of people in low-income countries are vaccinated, compared with 73 percent of those in high-income countries, as of last month. At the current rate, it will take another two and a half years for low-income countries to be able to vaccinate 70 percent of their populations with an initial two doses.

Campaigners said progress had been too slow since the first COVID-19 summit in September last year and called on governments to do more to ensure doses are getting to people in countries behind target. Too many still haven’t received enough supply, have had unpredictable access, and have faced other challenges delivering doses to people in need. Campaigners have also called for urgent action to redress the spiraling COVID-19 treatment access divide caused by the same rich country hoarding and profit-driven Big Pharma business model that excludes people living in poverty throughout the world.   

Julia Kosgei, Policy Advisor to the People’s Vaccine Alliance said: “The donation model has failed to deliver vaccines, has thwarted effective vaccine roll out plans, and is completely unsustainable. More than two years into the pandemic, millions have yet to have the initial doses needed to protect them from this deadly disease.”

“How is it that my elderly grandma in rural Kenya is still unprotected from COVID, yet pharmaceutical companies are hitting unheard of profits and say the world is ‘swimming’ in doses? These corporations have repeatedly demonstrated that they are not willing to do the right thing for humanity. Governments must step in and ensure everyone; everywhere has the vaccines they need.”

The Alliance, a coalition of over 90 organizations including the African Alliance, Oxfam, and UNAIDS says that transferring technology to boost local manufacturing will help address ongoing concerns including on-the-ground distribution challenges, vaccine hesitancy, and an overall shortfall in doses.

For the past year and a half, countries have been discussing a widely supported waiver of intellectual property for COVID-19 vaccines (so-called TRIPS waiver) at the World Trade Organization (WTO), which would remove barriers to developing countries being able to produce their own doses of COVID-19 medical tools.

Despite President Biden’s declared backing of the waiver for vaccines, there has been little progress. In fact, the initiative is still being blocked by the European Union, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Instead, the EU has backed an alternative proposal, which is not a waiver and would not deliver the goals of the original proposal by excluding testing and treatments, leaving out many countries. Worse, it adds even more barriers to countries hoping to produce generic versions of the vaccines.

The Alliance is calling on President Biden to use his influence to ensure all world leaders back the full TRIPS waiver not only for vaccines, but also for test and treatments to give countries the protection and dignity of being able to produce COVID-19 medical tools themselves, rather than relying on a handful of Western pharmaceutical companies. The Alliance is also calling on increased funding for manufacturing and vaccine delivery.

Meanwhile, more than 100 qualified manufacturers in Asia, Africa and Latin America could be producing doses of the mRNA COVID vaccines, but this capacity is going unused without the cooperation and technology transfer from Pfizer, Moderna and BioNTech. At the Annual General Meetings of Pfizer and Moderna, the companies opposed shareholder proposals by Oxfam for each to study the feasibility of transferring vaccine technology to qualified manufacturers in low- and middle-income countries.

Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager, said: “At this second COVID Summit, we should be acting urgently on the key thing low- and middle-income countries are asking for: the ability to make their own vaccines for their own people.”

“The unwillingness to share the vaccine technology and funding shortfalls are stunting our global response to COVID-19. Governments, including the US, must step up funding for immediate vaccine roll out and for the mRNA hub and the manufacturing capacity needed to build a production network in the global South. This would reduce dependence on a failing charity model and allow the world to pull out of this pandemic once and for all.”

The Alliance also says the scale of the pandemic in developing nations has been massively underestimated due to the lack of testing available. Last week the World Health Organization estimated the true global death toll from the COVID pandemic to be almost 15 million lives lost, with a death toll in lower income countries four times higher than in high income countries.

Marriott continued: “Voluntary measures from companies have delivered wild profits but also persistent vaccine inequity, new waves and new variants, unreliable and insufficient donations, and billions of people still waiting for their tests, treatments and vaccines.”

“Enough is enough. It’s time for governments to take bolder action to put people before profits.”

 

Notes:

Poverty and extreme inequality worsen in southern Africa as COVID-19 battered countries embark on a dangerous austerity path

The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the extreme inequality in Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries and pushed millions into poverty, reveals a new analysis from Oxfam, Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) and Development Finance International (DFI).

The Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index (CRI) report shows that the fifteen SADC member states lost about $80bn in 2020 due to lower-than-expected growth. which is equivalent to around $220 for every SADC citizen.

This analysis estimates that this economic crisis could take more than a decade to reverse, erasing all hope of countries meeting their national development plan targets to reduce poverty and inequality by 2030.

The organizations say that if countries act decisively now against inequality, with policies aimed to help support citizens with public services and support, the impact of the crisis could be reversed in just three years. However, the report finds that SADC countries have responded with belt-tightening measures that are likely to do more harm to people than good.

“The poorest in our societies are bearing the brunt of Covid-19 and are now facing the extra cost of austerity policies. Governments have a choice and must act now to reverse damage of the pandemic, increase social spending and tackle the inequality crisis”, says Felix Ngosa, senior programme officer in Norwegian Church Aid.

As many as 35.5 million people in SADC countries lost their jobs in 2020 due to the pandemic, down by 26% on 2019 employment numbers. The Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar and Tanzania were hardest hit, with over five million jobs lost in each country.

While the majority of SADC citizens have suffered from the pandemic and its effects, the story is different for the region’s wealthiest people. The six wealthiest men in SADC – four in South Africa and one each in Tanzania and Zimbabwe – saw their wealth expand from $18.1 billion to $27.7 during the two years of the pandemic, a 42% increase in real terms. This increase is more than enough to fund a full COVID vaccination program (plus a booster) for everyone in SADC. The richest 10% earn around or above 60% of national income in eight SADC countries, and 50% in the other seven, the report finds.

This wealth concertation by a small group of people has left a majority struggling to meet their most basic needs, such as quality education, healthcare and decent jobs.

“The findings of this analysis are shocking, but they confirm the reality of many countries in this natural resource-rich but poor and unequal region” says Dailes Judge, Oxfam in Southern Africa Programme Director. “The inequalities in most countries in the region are major drivers of reduced economic growth and weakened essential services such as quality healthcare and education”.

“Sadly, a majority of the people feeling the sting are the poor – those living in vulnerable conditions with little or no assets. Women- headed households represent a distressingly large proportion of those struggling and suffering.”

In 2021, with COVID-19 infections rising, the critical health, social protection and economic programs put in place by most governments in 2020 were rolled back and replaced with austerity policies, in the context of growing debt burdens and lack of external support for country budgets.

Governments have felt pressured by their increasing debt service payments to cut social spending. Even before the pandemic, debt servicing was reaching astronomical levels with SADC governments spending almost three times as much on domestic and external debt service as there were on health. In 2020–21, debt servicing took 42.2% of government revenues on average.

The report says that many Southern African Development Community (SADC) member governments are still showing considerable commitment to fighting inequality – but still nowhere near enough to offset the huge inequality produced by the market and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The combination of budget cuts, rising debt and a slow recovery due to global vaccine inequity risks raising the SADC inequality crisis to new heights,” says Mathew Martin, Development Finance International Director.

“Recovering from the pandemic, however, offers SADC governments a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do what their citizens want – to increase taxes on the wealthy and large corporations, to boost public spending especially on healthcare, education and social protection, and to boost workers’ rights in order to tackle joblessness and precarious work. With external support, for instance through debt relief and aid, SADC governments could reduce inequality drastically and eliminate extreme poverty by 2030.”

Notes

Southern Africa is the most unequal region in the world and contains the world’s three most unequal countries (South Africa, Namibia and Zambia), and another 3 of the 10 most unequal (Eswatini, Mozambique and Botswana). All SADC member states, except Tanzania and Mauritius, are in the top 50 most unequal countries.

The region has low proportions of workers with formal contracts and rights (and therefore access to sick pay, job protection, etc.), with fewer than 40% having such rights in Malawi, Zimbabwe, Angola, DRC, Zambia, Tanzania, Mozambique and Madagascar.

Many countries had limited access to essential health services, reaching under 50% of the population in seven countries, and forcing 5.4% of people to spend catastrophic proportions (i.e. more than 10%) of their income on healthcare across the region. These poor indicators reflected low commitments to healthcare spending, with this accounting for under 10% of government budgets in Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi, Madagascar and Tanzania.

Big pharma urged to address vaccine inequity

In separate virtual addresses to the shareholders of Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Oxfam called on the pharmaceutical corporations to improve COVID-19 vaccine equity and access so that everyone, everywhere has access to these life-saving shots.
 
Oxfam’s resolutions to Moderna and Pfizer call on the companies to study the feasibility of transferring vaccine technology and know-how to urgently ramp up production and improve sustainable access around the world. In a separate resolution before Johnson & Johnson shareholders, Oxfam seeks transparency on how the company determines pricing for its COVID vaccines in light of the billions of dollars of public funding from US taxpayers the company received.
 
Oxfam has urged all three vaccine manufacturers to share their technical know-how with the World Health Organization (WHO) to leverage the world’s full manufacturing capacity and support regionally based production as a means to increase the overall supply, reduce on-the-ground distributional challenges, and respond to the desire of low-and middle-income countries to produce doses for their own citizens.
 
“If Moderna worked with us, we could submit the WHO’s COVID-19 Vaccine mRNA Technology Transfer hub’s vaccine for approval at least one year sooner, which would save lives, decrease the risk of variants, and reduce the pandemic’s economic toll,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, in his unprecedented presentation of the Oxfam resolution to Moderna shareholders via a pre-recorded statement. “We urge Moderna to share technology and know-how with the WHO hub and commit to not enforcing patents for COVID-19 and other essential vaccines in countries hosting the WHO hub and spokes. We also urge them to offer training to scientists working on those efforts through the Moderna mRNA access program.”
 
“We are in the midst of the greatest public health crisis in 100 years. Despite safe and effective vaccines like Pfizer’s, thousands of people are still dying every day because protections against the coronavirus have not been made accessible to all,” said Ady Barkan, Founder and Co-Executive Director of Be A Hero, presenting the Oxfam resolution to Pfizer shareholders via recording. “Billions of people remain unvaccinated in part because Pfizer cannot produce enough doses on its own. And yet, Pfizer refuses to share its technology to boost global manufacturing.”
 
JNJ’s COVID-19 vaccine has protected people against severe illness and saved lives—yet the company has not done enough to ensure equitable access and transparency about its pricing strategy, despite the massive investment of 1.5 billion dollars in public funds that JNJ received,” said Maaza Seyoum, Global South Convener, People’s Vaccine Alliance, presenting the Oxfam resolution to Johnson & Johnson shareholders via recording. “This injustice has heartbreaking consequences. Millions of grandparents and healthcare workers across Africa are not protected from this virus. In India alone, over two million children have lost a parent to the pandemic. These lives matter.”
 
Oxfam filed the shareholder resolutions because more than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic and a year after the introduction of highly effective life-saving vaccines, 74 percent of people in high-income countries are fully vaccinated, while just 12 percent of people in low-income countries are.
 
The failure of major pharmaceutical companies to do more to ensure vaccine equity and access threatens the companies’ reputations and the interests of corporate investors who are impacted by the pandemic’s continued impact on the global economy, in addition to the devastating toll in illness and death.
 
“Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson have prioritized short-term profit-making over long-term sustainability and reputational risks, as well as public health needs. The flawed donation-based model has produced vast vaccine inequity, despite the desire, willingness, and ability for countries around the world to produce their own doses for their own citizens,” said Abby Maxman, President and CEO of Oxfam America. “We are proud to partner with Dr. Tedros, Ady Barkan, and Maaza Seyoum to urge shareholders to realize that a model based on tech sharing and local production will not only help end the current pandemic but also make the world more resilient for the future.”

Significant number of Moderna and Pfizer shareholders support vaccine technology transfer

An Oxfam resolution before Moderna shareholders received 24% of the nominal vote, or 29% of the independent vote factoring in the 17% of the vote share owned by the company’s directors and senior executives. A similar resolution before Pfizer shareholders garnered 27% of the vote.

The unprecedented Oxfam resolutions, introduced at the Moderna Annual General Meeting today by Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization and by Ady Barkan, Founder and Co-Executive Director of Be A Hero at the Pfizer Annual General Meeting, urged the companies to study the feasibility of transferring vaccine technology and know-how to urgently ramp up production and improve sustainable access around the world.

In reaction to the votes, Robbie Silverman, Oxfam America’s Senior Manager of Private Sector Advocacy, made the following statement:

“We are pleased to see that nearly 30% of Moderna and Pfizer’s investors agree that the companies should explore the feasibility of transferring its technology to spur manufacturing in low- and middle-income countries.  This is the first time that shareholders have voted for a resolution like this on any company proxy ballot.

“Unprecedented risks posed by an unprecedented global pandemic call for novel solutions – and a significant number of Moderna shareholders agree with the bold action we proposed.

“Only 12% of people in low-income countries are vaccinated today– as Dr. Tedros said, this is a “failure of humanity” and threatens the health of all of us, as new variants continue to emerge. 

“The countries most impacted are clear on what they believe is the best and most effective way to vaccinate their own citizens – transferring the technology and investing in locally-based manufacturing. 

“By every metric, the current donations-based model has failed – it leaves countries at the mercy of rich countries and profit-driven countries; exacerbates on-the-ground distributional challenges; and leaves the world with the same inequities and vulnerabilities that have plagued the global response since the start of the pandemic. 

“We believe this strong vote share demonstrates that a significant number of Moderna and Pfizer’s shareholders recognize that the only sustainable way to end the pandemic is to leverage the world’s full manufacturing capacity as quickly as possible. We call on these companies to actively collaborate with the WHO to use every possible tool to combat the scourge of COVID-19, save lives, and restore public health and the global economy.”

At its Annual General Meeting, Johnson & Johnson did not announce vote totals for the resolutions it faced, including Oxfam’s resolution, introduced by Maaza Seyoum, Global South Convener, People’s Vaccine Alliance, calling on the company to be more transparent about its pricing for its COVID vaccines in light of the billions of dollars of public funding from US taxpayers. The company has four days to file that information with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Oxfam reacts to reports of a compromise on vaccines TRIPS waiver

In response to reports of a potential compromise agreed by the EU, South Africa, India and the US for a waiver of intellectual property rules for COVID vaccines, Max Lawson, Head of Inequality Policy for Oxfam and co-chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said:

“After almost 18 months of stalling and millions of deaths, the EU has climbed down and finally admitted that intellectual property rules and pharmaceutical monopolies are a barrier to vaccinating the world. This is a tribute to millions of campaigners across the world who have demanded a Peoples Vaccine, but this leaked proposal is not the comprehensive TRIPS waiver demanded by over 100 governments. Unless it is significantly improved it will not do enough to bring an end to vaccine apartheid and ensure access for all.

“As it stands, this proposal seems to do little to address patents beyond the existing flexibilities in the TRIPS agreement. It ignores other intellectual property barriers like trade secrets that stand in the way of vaccine manufacturers. And by focusing only on vaccines and kicking the issue of COVID-19 treatments into the long grass, it will leave lifesaving treatments out of reach for millions.

“In a crisis, half measures are not acceptable. Every barrier to accessing these crucial vaccines and treatments must be cleared away. We urge member states to return to the negotiating table and come back with a comprehensive waiver that will work to cut short this pandemic and guarantee everyone is protected.”

COVID-19 death toll four times higher in lower-income countries than rich ones

3 million people died since the Omicron variant emerged, shattering perceptions that the pandemic is over

The COVID-19 death toll has been four times higher in lower-income countries than in rich ones, according to a new report published today by Oxfam on behalf of the People’s Vaccine Alliance as the world marks two years since the World Health Organisation declared the pandemic.

While the pandemic has been devastating for rich countries like Aotearoa New Zealand the world’s poorest countries have been hardest hit, with women and children bearing a disproportionate burden. Lack of testing and reporting means that very large numbers of deaths due to COVID-19 go unreported, especially in the poorest countries. Modelling using measures of excess deaths estimates that 19.6 million people have died because of COVID-19, over three times the official death toll. Based on this analysis, Oxfam calculated that for every death in a high-income country, an estimated four other people have died in a low or lower-middle income country. On a per capita basis, deaths in low and lower middle-income countries are 31% higher than high income countries.

Oxfam also calculated that three million COVID-19 deaths have occurred in the three months since the Omicron variant emerged. The figure shatters perceptions that Omicron’s milder illness means the pandemic is coming to an end, as the more contagious variant tears through unvaccinated populations. By some estimates, over half of humanity is set to have been infected with COVID-19 by the end of March 2022. While most cases will be mild, the sheer number of cases means that numbers of deaths remain high. 

The report also outlines that:

  • Every minute, four children around the world have lost a parent or caregiver to COVID. In India alone, more than two million children lost a caregiver.
  • Women have been 1.4 times more likely to drop out of the labour force than men because of the pandemic.
  • 73 percent of people in high income countries are fully vaccinated while just six percent of people in low-income countries are.

However, not everyone has lost out due to the pandemic, with a new billionaire created every 26 hours. Of those new billionaires, 40 are COVID-19 billionaires, having made their billions profiting from vaccines, treatments, tests, and personal protective equipment (PPE). During the pandemic, the world’s 10 richest men have seen their fortunes double, rising at a rate of $1.3 billion a day, or $15,000 dollars a second.

Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager, said:

“After two years, we all want this pandemic to be over, but politicians in rich countries are exploiting that fatigue to ignore the devastating impact of COVID-19 that continues to this day.

“While incredibly effective vaccines provided hope, rich countries derailed the global vaccine rollout with nationalism, greed, and self-interest. Suggestions that we are entering a ‘post-COVID era’ ignore the continuing deaths in primarily lower-income countries that could be prevented by vaccines.”

Oxfam is part of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, a global coalition of nearly 100 organisations, campaigning for vaccine equity through support for a waiver of intellectual property rules on COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, and by making pharmaceutical companies share their science and knowhow with qualified producers in developing countries, so they are able to make their own doses.

Maaza Seyoum, Global South Convenor for the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said:

“Rich countries and corporations have tied up the global response to COVID-19 for their own benefit, leaving the global south to bear the brunt of this pandemic.

“As billions of people are still unable to access vaccines, some have the audacity to claim that the pandemic is over. That is an utter fallacy. Third and fourth doses in rich countries alone cannot erase the ever-rising death toll in lower-income countries.

“The charity approach to global vaccination has failed. Global south countries can and must manufacture vaccines and treatments for themselves – and they must maintain control of their own supplies. Rich countries must waive intellectual property rules on COVID-19 technologies and force big pharma to share the recipes.”

The report, Pandemic of Greed, warns that dangerous myths have fuelled the pandemic and excused a lack of bold and innovative policy action.

Gregg Gonsalves, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at Yale University, said:

“While Omicron tends to lead to a milder illness in many, the variant’s higher transmissibility means it can cut a deadly swath through countries, particularly among the unvaccinated. We may all be done with the coronavirus, but the coronavirus is not done with all of us.

“There must be a better way out of the suffering of the past two years, a way where everyone had access to vaccines, and no one was disposable. Public health decisions must be based on comprehensive evidence, not political agendas.

“The ‘post-COVID’ narrative emerging from rich countries will only worsen the complacency that has plagued the global fight against COVID-19. The global south understandably wants to take things into their own hands – and rich countries should let them.” 

Notes:

See the full report here.

Copyright © 2024 Oxfam Aotearoa.

Oxfam is a worldwide development organisation that mobilises the power of people against injustice. Oxfam Aotearoa is a registered charity with the New Zealand Charities Register (registration CC24641). Donations are tax refundable.

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