Even as developing countries struggle for vaccine supply—with Africa vaccinating only less than 2 percent of its people-- to achieve herd immunity from COVID-19, rich countries like the United States already inoculated 40 percent of its people and Europe 20 percent.
The global desperation for vaccine supply has pushed prices up and created nine new billionaires, according to recent reports of the Agence France Presse.
The latest IMF blog sent to my email said that more than a more than a year into the COVID-19 crisis, new cases worldwide are higher than ever. Urgent action is needed to arrest the rising human toll and economic strain.
As the IMF has warned, economic recoveries are diverging dangerously. The disparities will widen further between wealthy countries that have widespread access to vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics, and poorer countries still struggling to inoculate frontline healthcare workers.
As of the end of April 2021, less than two percent of Africa’s population had been vaccinated. By contrast, over 40 percent of the population in the United States and over 20 percent in Europe had received at least one dose of the vaccine, said blog authors Kristalina Georgieva (Managing Director of IMF), Gita Gopinath (Economic Counsellor and Director of the IMF's Research Department), and Ruchir Agarwal (an Economist at the IMF).
It is well understood that there can be no lasting end to the economic crisis without an end to the health crisis. Pandemic policy is thus economic policy. It is critical for global macroeconomic and financial stability, which makes it of fundamental importance to the IMF and other economic institutions.
Ending the pandemic is a solvable problem but requires further coordinated global action.
The IMF proposed that to fight the pandemic, at least 40 percent of the world’s population must be inoculated by end of 2021 and at least 60 percent by the first half of 2022. There must also be active tracking to insure against downside risks and that efforts must be made for widespread testing and tracing; maintain adequate stocks of therapeutics and enforce public health measures in places where vaccine coverage is low.
Importantly, the strategy requires not just commitments but upfront financing, upfront vaccine donations, and ‘at-risk’ investment for the world to insure against downside scenarios, which could cost $50 billion in grants, national government resources and concessional financing.
There is a strong case for grant financing of at least $35 billion. The good news is G20 governments have already identified as important to address the $22 billion grant funding gap noted by the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator. This leaves an estimated $13 billion in additional grant contributions needed.
The remainder of the overall financing plan—around $15 billion—could come from national governments, potentially supported by COVID-19 financing facilities created by multilateral development banks.
No justification needed
Saving lives and livelihoods should need no justification, but a faster end to the pandemic could also inject the equivalent of $9 trillion into the global economy by 2025 due to a faster resumption of economic activity.
Advanced economies, likely to spend the most in this effort, would see the highest return on public investment in modern history—capturing 40 percent of the cumulative $9 trillion in global GDP gains and roughly $1 trillion in additional tax revenues.
The IMF is recommending:
1. Provide additional upfront grants to COVAX of at least $4 billion. This financing will help finalize orders and activate unused vaccine capacity.
2. Ensure free cross-border flows of raw materials and finished vaccines: Such restrictions are jeopardizing access to vaccines for billions of people in the developing world.
3. Immediately donate surplus vaccines: We project at least 500 million vaccines courses (equivalent to around 1 billion doses) can be donated in 2021, even if countries give preference to their own populations. Donations, including for delivery costs, should be done through COVAX so vaccines are shared on equitable and public health principles.
We project the measures identified in steps 1–3 may be sufficient to achieve the 40 percent vaccination target by the end of 2021 and the 60 percent target by the first half of 2022, if no downside risks materialize.
4. Make at-risk investments to diversify and increase vaccine production capacity by 1 billion doses in early 2022 to handle downside risks in 91 low- and middle-income countries, including from new variants that may require booster shots [$8 billion].
5. Scale up genomic surveillance and systemic supply chain surveillance with concrete contingency plans in place to handle possible mutations or shocks to the supply chain. These plans should be prepared with the participation of multilateral agencies, vaccine developers and manufacturers, and key national governments [$3 billion].
Managing the interim period when vaccine supply is limited
6. Ensure widespread testing, sufficient therapeutics, public health measures, and prepare for vaccine deployment [$30 billion].
7. Urgently evaluate and implement (where approved) dose stretching strategies to expand effective supply [$2 billion].
Additional needed measures account for $3 billion. Steps 4–7 are needed to insure against downside risks, and to mitigate the health consequences of the pandemic in the interim period.
The proposal complements the work of the G20 High Level Independent Panel, the G7 Pandemic Preparedness Partnership group, and the Report of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, which primarily focus on addressing future pandemics. This proposal focuses on what is needed to bring the current pandemic under control. To make it effective, countries need to work together.
The world does not have to live through the pain of another record surge of COVID-19 cases. With strong global action now and with little in terms of financing relative to the outsized benefits, we can durably exit this health crisis, the authors stressed.
New billionaires
Meanwhile, the AFP said profits from COVID-19 jabs have created at least nine new billionaires, a campaign group said, calling for an end to pharmaceutical corporations’ “monopoly control” on vaccine technology.
"Between them, the nine new billionaires have a combined net wealth of $19.3 billion (15.8 billion euros), enough to fully vaccinate all people in low-income countries 1.3 times," The People's Vaccine Alliance said in a statement.
The alliance, a network of organizations and activists campaigning for an end to property rights and patents for inoculations, said its figures were based on the Forbes Rich List data.
"These billionaires are the human face of the huge profits many pharmaceutical corporations are making from the monopoly they hold on these vaccines," said Anna Marriott from charity Oxfam, which is part of the alliance.
In addition to the new mega-rich, eight existing billionaires have seen their combined wealth increase by $32.2 billion thanks to the vaccine rollout, the alliance said.
Topping the list of new vaccine billionaires were the CEO of Moderna Stephane Bancel, and his BioNTech counterpart Ugur Sahin.
Three other neo-billionaires are co-founders of the Chinese vaccine company CanSino Biologics.
The research comes ahead of the G20 Global Health Summit on Friday, which has been a lightning rod for growing calls to temporarily remove intellectual property protections on Covid-19 vaccines.
Proponents say doing so would boost production in developing countries and address the dramatic inequity in access.
The United States, as well as influential figures like Pope Francis, back the idea of a global waiver on patent protections.
At a Paris summit seeking to boost financing in Africa amid the pandemic on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron called for the removal of "all these constraints in terms of intellectual property which blocks the production of certain types of vaccines."
The European Commission said Wednesday it would be a "constructive" voice in WTO talks on the issue.
"The highly effective vaccines we have are thanks to massive amounts of taxpayers’ money so it can’t be fair that private individuals are cashing in while hundreds of millions face second and third waves completely unprotected," said Heidi Chow, Senior Policy and Campaigns Manager at Global Justice Now, which helped analyze the billionaire data.
"As thousands of people die each day in India, it is utterly repugnant... to put the interests of the billionaire owners of Big Pharma ahead of the desperate needs of millions," she added.
Manufacturers have stressed that patent protection is not the limiting factor in ramping up vaccine production.
They say a wide range of issues -- from the set- up of manufacturing sites, to the sourcing of raw materials, to the availability of qualified personnel -- are holding up the manufacturing process.