Richest countries are on course to purchase one billion excess COVID-19 vaccines, new analysis finds

New analysis from the anti-poverty organisation ONE Campaign has found that the world’s richest countries are on track to purchase over one billion more COVID-19 vaccine doses than they need.

The analysis, conducted by ONE’s Policy team, looks at supply deals for COVID-19 vaccines agreed by G20 countries and the EU.

The report used specific parameters to define what are considered ‘excess doses’ by counting procured doses of the five leading vaccines that have been proven to be safe and effective in clinical trials, and have obtained regulatory approval or are expected to be given regulatory approval in the first half of 2021.

This includes vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca/Oxford University, Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) and Novavax.

The team also assumed that countries that are able to donate doses would maintain sufficient amounts to vaccinate 100% of their populations and would only donate any excess supply.

Using this approach, the analysis found that five countries – Australia, Canada, Japan, the UK and the US – plus the European Union, that is made up of 27 member states, could share over one billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines with other countries and still have enough doses to vaccinate their entire populations.

The report also said that this excess could be even higher if the impact of vaccine hesitancy is taken into account.

This could mean that, if the above five countries and the EU retained only enough vaccine doses for 75% of their populations, they could share 1.7 billion doses with other countries.

In addition, if other COVID-19 vaccine candidates are found to be safe and effective in clinical trials – such as candidates from GlaxoSmithKline/Sanofi and/or Curevac – an additional one billion excess doses could be collectively shared.

The authors of the report have recommended that potential donor countries should put plans in place to start sharing doses after vaccinating at least 20% of their populations – the threshold currently recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).

They also recommend sharing doses through the COVAX facility – the international vaccines-sharing facility that is aiming to accelerate the development, production and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments and vaccines.

“As long as the virus remains unchecked anywhere on the planet, it will continue to mutate, breach borders and wreak havoc on communities and the global economy,” said the ONE Campaign.

“There could be twice as many deaths from COVID-19 if rich countries monopolise the first doses of vaccines instead of making sure they are distributed globally.

“The only way to prevent new and possibly more dangerous variants is to dramatically slow transmission of the virus through widespread vaccination,” it added.