FACT BRIEF

Have advance purchases of COVID-19 vaccines by rich countries cut availability for the rest of the world?

Saturday, February 13, 2021

By Gus Fisher

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YES

Wealthy countries making up 14% of the world’s population have pre-purchased 51% of all available COVID-19 vaccines, according to The BMJ. By November 2020, Japan, Australia and Canada, with about 45 million recorded cases, had secured more than a billion vaccine doses, the journal reported.

According to Duke University, high-income countries like Australia and Canada have purchased enough vaccines to inoculate their populations several times over. These countries have little incentive to share their supply through global distribution programs.

An advocacy coalition including Oxfam and UNAIDS attributes the imbalance in part to patent rules, which they argue are restricting supply by limiting the number of authorized manufacturers.

Duke says that without a rapid expansion of global manufacturing capacity, most people in poor countries could wait until 2024 to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

The BMJ: Reserving coronavirus disease 2019 vaccines for global access

Launch and Scale Speedometer by Duke University Launch & Scale Speedometer: Mapping COVID-19 vaccine pre-purchases across the globe

People’s Vaccine Alliance People’s Vaccine Alliance: FAQs

Duke University Duke: Will low-income countries be left behind when COVID-19 vaccines arrive?

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