Even as over 13 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been produced and 11 billion have been administered across the world, experts at a virtual briefing of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (IFPMA) have said that equitable distribution of vaccines remains a major concern.
The spread of the Omicron BA2 variant underscores the importance of targeted immunisation and should focus all minds to ensure full course vaccinations are administered to the elderly, vulnerable populations.
Sufficient vaccines are available to continue inoculation programmes since more than 7.98 billion doses could be produced this year. More than half of the doses forecast to be produced this year will be Covid-19 vaccines produced by companies that are a member of IFPMA along with their partners, who are in technology transfer agreements with them.
“The trend that we predicted last year that Covid-19 vaccine supplies will outstrip global demand has been proven correct,” said Thomas Cueni, Director General, IFPMA.
The Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing scale-up has seen 372 partnerships forged, of which 88 per cent (329) include technology transfer or fill and finish. About 51 manufacturing and production agreements were made in developing countries (LICs and LMICs).
In addition, several important commitments have been made by biopharmaceutical companies that are set to change Africa’s vaccine manufacturing landscape in years to come. “To continue to advocate that vaccine equity is caused by scarcity of vaccines due to a lack of technology transfer flies in the face of the facts – both for the numbers of vaccines available but also for the way vaccines are made. The reasons for the woeful inequity are manyfold but cannot be laid at the door of intellectual property,” Cueni explained.
“We remain steadfast in our verdict that the proposed World Trade Organization’s TRIPS waiver is a solution in search of a problem. It is a distraction and is misleading in its promise of equity for this pandemic. And it sends the wrong signal to innovators for future pandemics,” he added.
At present, there are 271 vaccines in pre-clinical and 147 in clinical phases and there are 1,827 treatment candidates in clinical trials
