US, India, China Account For 60% Of 2 Billion Vaccine Doses Distributed Globally: WHO

United Nations:

Of the two billion COVID-19 vaccine doses distributed globally till now, about 60 per cent have gone to just three countries - the US, India and China, a senior adviser at the World Health Organisation said.

Senior Advisor to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Bruce Aylward made the comments at a press briefing on Friday.

This week, we will see over two billion doses we will probably pass the two billion doses landmark in terms of the number of doses of the vaccines and new COVID-19 vaccines that have actually been developed. These have been distributed now in over 212 countries, Aylward said.

If we look at that two billion doses, over 75 per cent of it has gone to just 10 countries. And in fact three countries - China, the US and India - account for about 60 per cent of those doses, he said.

He said while COVAX has played an important role in distributing the COVID-19 doses to 127 countries and getting several countries to start their vaccination drives, the challenge is in the access to the vaccines.

He said the 60 per cent of the two billion doses that have gone to China, India and the US are all domestically procured and used .

Aylward noted that at the other end of the spectrum , only about 0.5 per cent of doses globally have gone to the lowest income countries that account for about 10 per cent of the world's population.

And even if we look at the lower middle income countries, it's only fractionally higher than that in terms of the coverage that we're getting. So we're increasingly seeing a two-track recovery and rollout of the vaccines, he said.

While there is high vaccine coverage deep into the high risk populations and younger populations in high income countries, we are still struggling to get sufficient product just to be able to vaccinate the health care workers, older populations in low income countries who are really the key to getting out of the health, societal and economic crisis that we are in the midst of.

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