Countries have invested in COVID-19 vaccines, some in hundreds of millions, and some need to find foreign aid and international support
Text/ Zhao Tianyu
Editor / Wang Xiao
Photo/pixabay
88.3% of the country's total population has completed the full process of COVID-19 vaccination. This is the news revealed at the press conference of the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council on April 12, 2022.
As of 11 April, more than 3.3 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been reported nationwide, and 1.245 billion people have been vaccinated.
As a result, the number of people in China who have completed the intensification of immunization is 719 million.
Globally, 11.47 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine are given, and approximately 11.03 million doses are currently given per day. That's the number for statistics platform Our World in Data as of April 18.
Such a large range of vaccinations costs governments a lot, and the vaccines used by countries are not equally priced.
China's new crown vaccine free vaccination, since the National Medical Insurance Bureau led the procurement of new crown inactivated vaccines, to promote enterprises to continuously reduce prices, the price from no more than 90 yuan / dose, 40 yuan / dose, to about 20 yuan / dose. Recently, the National Medical Insurance Bureau negotiated with enterprises again, and the newly agreed price has dropped to a lower level, that is, it is lower than 20 yuan per dose.
This price, even if placed in the world, also belongs to the category of low prices. According to incomplete statistics according to public information, only the vaccine produced in India and Brazil is less than 20 yuan a dose.
Overall, many countries have invested in COVID-19 vaccines in hundreds of millions of dollars. But, as some finance ministers have said, that's a fraction of what the COVID-19 pandemic has cost.
The global price difference for one dose of COVID-19 vaccine
According to the latest statistics released by UNICEF, the price of 35 new crown vaccines that have been used worldwide is 2 US dollars to 40 US dollars (about 13 yuan to 254 yuan) per dose.
Among them, the cheapest is the new crown vaccine of Indian pharmaceutical company Bioological E, called Corbevax, which is a recombinant protein vaccine. In India, the price per dose is only $1.92, which is equivalent to 12 yuan.
The vaccine manufactured by the Indian Serum Research Institute generally has a lower price, about 3 US dollars a dose, about 19 yuan.
A COVID-19 vaccine used in the European Union is also cheap, $3.50 (about 22 yuan) a dose, this vaccine from the multinational pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, is an adenovirus vector vaccine called Vaxzevria. AstraZeneca also produced a vaccine, produced in India with the same technical route, called Covideld, and the two vaccines are like twins. Covishield is also not expensive in India, $2.88 (about 18 yuan) a dose.
China's National Medical Insurance Bureau has negotiated with enterprises for many times, and the price of inactivated covid-19 vaccines has gradually decreased, and the price of less than 20 yuan a dose also belongs to the category of low prices in the world.
ACCORDING TO UNICEF, the world's most expensive COVID-19 vaccine is in Kuwait. The mRNA vaccine used in the country comes from the US vaccine company Moderna, and it is $40 per dose, which is 254 yuan, which is a very expensive one. However, the mRNA vaccine costs $28.88 a dose, or less than 200 yuan, in botswana, a southern African country, and more than $20 per dose in the European Union.
While the supply of vaccines is no longer as tight as it was in the early days of the pandemic, money is still a big issue, even in a global perspective.
"We need stronger fundraising." At the Munich Security Conference on 18 February 2022, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on countries to fill the emergency funding gap of US$16 billion to support the COVID-19 Tools Accelerator to make COVID-19 vaccines, tests, treatments and protective equipment available around the world.
Tedros said "$16 billion is clearly insignificant" compared to another year of economic turmoil. Finance ministers in some countries say that is a fraction of the money lost by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit international tourism very hard. According to a Report released by the United Nations in June 2021, the blow of COVID-19 on international tourism could cost the global economy $4 trillion.
The recovery of tourism will depend heavily on global COVID-19 vaccinations. 64.8% of the global population has received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine. That's the number for statistics platform Our World in Data as of April 13.
"At present, although vaccination cannot completely block the spread of the virus, the effect on severe illness and death is still very significant." At a press conference on April 12, Wang Huaqing, chief expert of the immunization program of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that it is recommended that the elderly who meet the conditions be vaccinated as soon as possible, be vaccinated as soon as possible, and strengthen the vaccination as soon as possible when the conditions need to be strengthened.
The costs of various countries vary widely: some in the hundreds of millions, some look for foreign aid
Global vaccination remains uneven to date. Only 15.2% of people in low-income countries have been vaccinated against at least one dose of COVID-19.
For some governments with insufficient money and technology, it is indeed a big challenge to raise enough COVID-19 vaccines. Part of the financial investment of governments for the new crown vaccine is in hundreds of millions, while the other part needs to find foreign aid and raise it from multiple parties.
For example, on April 6, 2021, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced a $3 billion grant to expand covid-19 vaccine programs, far more than most countries. The CDC plans to use the money for the distribution, acquisition and management of COVID-19 vaccines.
A year later, on April 4, 2022, the U.S. Senate reached an agreement to spend $10 billion on increasing COVID-19 testing, treatment and vaccines, of which at least $750 million will be used to study new variants and expand COVID-19 vaccine production.
In the United States, covid-19 vaccinations are free, and the CDC says the covid-19 vaccine is paid for by taxpayer money and is provided free of charge to all people living in the United States, regardless of insurance or immigration status.
On March 16, the German government approved a contract worth 2.86 billion euros to purchase a COVID-19 vaccine, which is until 2029.
A year ago, in January 2021, Japan had set aside about $6.32 billion from the emergency budget to ensure residents had access to covid-19 vaccines.
Some countries have also invested in early research and development of COVID-19 vaccines. For example, at the beginning of the epidemic, in March 2020, the UK government pledged to invest £250 million to find and develop a COVID-19 vaccine.
However, for some low- and middle-income countries, the money that can be spent on COVID-19 vaccines is not as large. For example, pakistan, a low- and middle-income country, is mainly supplied with COVID-19 vaccines from Donations and COVAX from China. COVAX is a global COVID-19 vaccine implementation plan that China has joined.
Academics from Pakistan, Malaysia and the United Kingdom published a study in August 2021 in which they noted that the Pakistani government allocated 1.1 billion Pakistani rupees (38 million yuan) in the 2021-2022 federal budget to achieve the goal of vaccinate at least 70 million people locally.
On March 14, 2022, Tajikistan signed a $25 million grant agreement with the World Bank to support Tajikistan's procurement of COVID-19 vaccines.
According to the WHO target, 70% of the population of each country will be vaccinated by 2022. But as of 13 January, 36 of the organization's 194 Member States had vaccination rates of less than 10 percent and 88 member states had less than 40 percent.
As a global vaccine coordination programme established in 2020, COVAX has delivered COVID-19 vaccines to 144 countries and territories by January 2022, of which 85% of the vaccines have been shipped to 86 low-income countries. As of September 2021, COVAX has raised more than $10 billion and is still scrambling for more funding.
According to media reports, while COVAX aims to ensure that poor countries have fair access to vaccines, there was fierce competition in the first half of last year.
The reason is that rich countries require them to be shipped first. For example, in April 2021, the United Kingdom claimed 5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from an Indian manufacturer, and by mid-May, the average daily death toll of the new crown virus in India exceeded 4,000. India went on to enact a ban on vaccine exports.
In the chaos, COVAX fell to the end of the line and could only wait for the rich countries to donate excess stocks. This means that the supply of vaccines becomes unstable.
More than 11 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been produced worldwide, enough to give at least one shot to every adult worldwide.
The total number of vaccines donated by countries around the world has reached 1 billion doses. However, some of these vaccines have been wasted. For example, in January 2022, Uganda, which was assigned 500,000 doses of the mRNA vaccine, had to destroy 400,000 doses of the vaccine because it could not be used before it expired; Nigeria destroyed 1 million doses of the vaccine last December.
Despite the efforts of all countries, the global situation of under-vaccination and uneven distribution has not only reduced the effectiveness of humanity against the new crown virus, but also brought great challenges to global navigation.