US reels under pressure to step up efforts to address COVID vaccine distribution gap

As the concerns against hoarding of the coronavirus vaccines by the wealthier nations grew tenfold, the United States reeled under the pressure of equitable COVID-19 jab distribution to the poorer nations, many of whom have no access to immunization yet. Despite the US' announcement of close to $4 billion funding for WHO’s humanitarian initiative COVAX, which focused on “fair and equitable'' vaccine distribution, the disparity between the rich and the poorer nations has deepened.

The rich countries have procured enough supplies to give each person at least four doses, according to an analytical report, with the US recently ramping up supply with 100 million additional vaccine doses from Johnson & Johnson.

“At this critical moment, vaccine equity is the biggest moral test before the global community,” Guterres told a UN Security Council meeting, reiterating that as many as 130 poorer countries of the world had not received even a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine.

As the rest of the world, particularly the financially challenged African continent struggled with vaccine procurement, the US President Biden announced that there will be enough doses for every American by the end of May. "We're now on track to have enough vaccine supply for every adult in America by the end of May," Biden told a presser, touting his administration’s efforts to get a surplus of jabs.

Further, he stated that the US was invoking the Defense Production Act to ramp up vaccine production of the recently authorized Johnson & Johnson by the US FDA. The American President said that he was now prioritizing school and childcare providers for inoculation in weeks ahead. Thus far, more than 100 million Americans have been “fully vaccinated” against the novel COVID-19 virus, which roughly comprises 10.5 per cent of the total population. 

“We want to be a part of the effort around the world to vaccinate people around the world in a range of countries,” said the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki told reporters at the White house.

US holds QUAD meeting with India

Amidst WHO’s growing criticism of the vaccine distribution gap, with Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, calling the stockpiling of jabs a “catastrophic moral failure”, the US recently convened a first of a kind coordination with leaders of India, Australia and Japan. At a summit known as Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD), which Biden convened along with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the US geared up to draft plans with allies in order to boost the production of COVID-19 vaccines for poorer nations. 

At Friday’s virtual meeting, the US stepped up vaccine cooperation with the leaders of three countries, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic as together they committed to deliver up to 1 billion doses of the Covid-19 vaccines to Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Indo-Pacific countries by 2022.

The vaccines would be funded by Japan, and manufactured by India, with Australia investing in logistics, US  national security advisor Jake Sullivan said at a White House briefing. The US has also pledged to finance India's manufacturers to increase vaccine production capacity, and India is tasked to later export the vials to the nations impacted with a shortfall in Indo-pacific region. India has already donated vaccines to at least 70 countries of the world under its generous Vaccine Maitri initiative.