A key Covax partner will stop giving free vaccines to middle-income countries

Many poorer countries will continue to get free Covid vaccines, but global demand for them has plummeted, pushing the target away from a large cover.

A key partner of Covax, the organization that led the effort to bring Covid vaccines to poor and middle-income countries, will stop supplying the vaccines to a large part of the world's population over the coming year, and to provide them only to the poorest countries.

Gavi's Board of Governors, the non-profit organization that provides vaccines to developing countries, voted at a meeting in Geneva on Thursday to end Covax support to 37 countries, including Egypt and Indonesia, where hundreds of thousands of people have died from the coronavirus.

Fifty-four other nations, including some of the world's poorest countries, will continue to receive free Covid vaccines and funding for lui lp delivers them - if they want - until 2025.

The decision reflects the fact that the demand for vac Covid cins have plummeted around the world and Gavi has found itself overcommitted to purchasing vaccines when countries don't want them. Continued vaccination efforts should focus on high-risk groups, including the elderly and immunocompromised.

Covax has delivered 1.7 billion Covid vaccines to people developing countries, under difficult circumstances, but is far from achieving its goal of ensuring equitable access to vaccines worldwide. The effort was hampered initially by high-income countries blocking initial vaccine supply, then by erratic supply flows and weak delivery systems.

Today, vaccination rates in countries served by Covax average 52% of the population receiving the initial Covid inoculation. But the figure for sub-Saharan Africa is only 26%. Delivery of booster doses has stalled in developing countries and Covid cases are rising globally.

"It is alarming that this decision has been taken while the pandemic is still ongoing and without extensive consultation with these countries," said Kate Elder, Senior Advisor on vaccination policy for physicians. Without Borders Access Campaign.

But Dr. Anthony Mounts, director of the Covid vaccine introduction program at the Task Force for Global Health, an organization nonprofit which has supported Covid vaccine delivery in 37 developing countries, said the decision seemed inevitable in the face of the general lack of interest in Covid vaccines it had seen. The World Health Organization estimates that 90% of the world's population is now immune to Covid-19, whether through vaccination or previous infection. , I think just the fact that there is a coordinating mechanism has been extremely helpful,” said Dr Mounts. "But it's time to change direction and really focus on high-risk groups and what we can do to protect them."

ImagePalestinian Ministry of Health staff unloading 300,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines supplied by Covax in 2021.Credit...Jaafar Ashtiyeh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The 37 countries for which support is ending will receive a one-time payment, which the council called "catalytic", to set up their own recovery programs. Covid vaccination. They will continue to have the option to purchase vaccines at a discounted price negotiated by Gavi.

The remaining 54 are countries that have received Gavi support for routine vaccination before the pandemic. If these countries choose to continue Covid campaigns, Gavi will integrate Covid injections into the regular support it offers, ending the emergency programme.

"We are so committed...