The United States, Great Britain, Japan and EU countries have agreed to supply more than 1.3 billion doses of potential coronavirus vaccines, Bloomberg reports citing data from London-based analytical company Airfinity.
The vaccine will be supplied to the U.S. and UK by Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Japan has signed a contract with Pfizer. According to Bloomberg, EU countries are also being “aggressive” in their purchases, although it has not yet been proven that the vaccine will be effective.
Analysts predict that given the possibility of increased supplies and not yet closed deals, the number of doses for these countries may increase by 1.5 billion. Therefore, they fear that the rest of the states will remain “last in line” for vaccines.
International organizations and a number of countries promise that vaccines will be available to all, but it is unlikely that there will be enough for the entire world population, especially since sometimes two doses per person may be needed. Less well-off nations fear a repeat of what happened in 2009 during the swine flu pandemic, when rich countries monopolized supplies.
The University of Oxford, British-Swedish AstraZeneca, and Pfizer and BioNTech, which are developing the vaccine together, are in the final stages of research. However, the developers have yet to prove the efficacy of the vaccine and obtain approval for production. Airfinity predicts that global vaccine shipments will reach 1 billion doses by the first quarter of 2022 alone. Meanwhile, the WHO notes that vaccination should not be expected before the first half of 2021.
