Getting the Vaccine: COVAX and Other Options
In an earlier blog , I talked of the rich country – poor country divide when it comes to getting the COVID-19 vaccine. In that, there was one chart on the number of doses pre-ordered per citizen for various countries. Here is a chart of the total number of doses ordered by countries, in decreasing order: It’s good to see India is 2 nd on the list. But did you notice the fourth row named COVAX? You’ve heard of EU, SAARC, ASEAN, but what is COVAX? To answer that, you need some background. It doesn’t help if some countries get vaccinated while others don’t, because the virus will just spread again. While everyone understands that point, it is politically impossible for any country to care about other countries over themselves. Hence, COVAX : “It is the only truly global solution to this pandemic because it is the only effort to ensure that people in all corners of the world will get access to COVID-19 vaccines once they are available, regardless of their wealth.” A...