Rich Countries Hog Vaccines. Is There a Solution?

Almost a year into the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines, health officials are still struggling to close a yawning gap. While 64% of people in wealthy countries had received at least one dose by Nov. 23, just 7.5% had in low-income nations, according to the United Nations. Concerns that the rich would also monopolize new Covid treatments sparked an effort to prevent that from happening. For vaccines, there was no sign of a solution any time soon, despite proposals to suspend intellectual-property protections for makers of the shots and an effort in Africa to reverse-engineer one of the most successful formulations and produce it in factories there.

Affluent countries locked up the lion’s share of initial doses by signing contracts with vaccine companies as inoculations were being developed. But the concentration of vaccine manufacturing in a handful of countries has also played a role. Before Covid emerged, the rich world relied mostly on the U.S. and the European Union for vaccine imports while India was the main exporter to developing countries. In the pandemic, all three prioritized their own markets. China, whose industry previously focused on domestic production, has become a major supplier of Covid vaccines to developing nations, using them as a tool of diplomacy. But its exports couldn’t fill the gap, and its shots haven’t proved as effective as several others. Covax, a program set up to try to distribute shots fairly around the world, has struggled to secure doses and missed its delivery targets.