By Sangmi Cha and Neil Jerome Morales
SEOUL/MANILA, March 30 (Reuters) - Several Asian countries
sought alternative sources for COVID-19 inoculations on Tuesday
after export restrictions by manufacturer India left a World
Health Organization-backed global vaccine sharing programme
short of supplies.
The export curb deepens the problems facing the COVAX
scheme, relied on by 64 poorer countries, and adds to previous
setbacks that include production glitches and a lack of funding
contribution from wealthy nations.
The shortage could leave poor countries further behind in
inoculations, increasing the vaccine inequity, complicating
global efforts to tame the coronavirus including more infectious
variants, and exposing fresh pleas for a global treaty on
pandemics as rather hollow.
South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam are
among countries to be hit by shipment delays to vaccines they
have been promised under the COVAX programme, which was created
mainly to ensure supplies for poorer countries.
"Our planned increase in daily vaccinations will be
affected," Carlito Galvez, Philippines' vaccination chief, told
reporters.
India, the world's biggest vaccine maker, put a temporary
hold on exports of AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN)'s AZN.L vaccine being
manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII), as officials
focus on meeting rising domestic demand.
The Serum Insitute was due to deliver 90 million vaccine
doses to COVAX over March and April and, while it was not
immediately clear how many would be diverted for domestic use,
programme facilitators warned that shipment delays were
inevitable. In Indonesia, health ministry official Siti Nadia Tarmizi
told Reuters that 10.3 million doses from COVAX were likely
delayed until May.
South Korea confirmed it would only receive 432,000 doses of
the 690,000 it had been promised and delivery of those would be
delayed until around the third week of April.
"There's uncertainty over global vaccine supplies but we're
working on a plan to ensure no disruptions in the second quarter
and making efforts to secure more vaccines," said Kim Ki-nam,
head of South Korea's COVID-19 vaccination task force team.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte loosened government
restrictions on private sector imports of vaccines, pleading
with companies to obtain supplies no matter the cost, as his
country battles a resurgence of the pandemic. In Vietnam, officials have similarly asked the private
sector to step in after their COVAX supplies were slashed by 40%
to 811,200 doses and shipments were pushed back by weeks.
India has not provided details on the length of its export
curb but UNICEF, a distributing partner of COVAX, said at the
weekend that deliveries are expected to resume by May.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on
Tuesday COVAX needed 10 million doses immediately as a stop-gap
measure. "We are already in discussion with some countries (to fill
the gap) and there is some positive signal, we will keep you
informed," he said.
Data from UNICEF showed on Tuesday that India itself had
received more than a third of the nearly 28 million doses of the
AstraZeneca vaccines from COVAX so far, the most of any country.
News that the largest allocation of the programme's Indian-made
vaccines had never actually left India could add to criticism of
New Delhi and COVAX. The Gavi alliance, which co-leads COVAX with the WHO, said
India had been given a big allocation early, in part because it
approved the vaccine for emergency use before the WHO did.
Africa is overwhelmingly dependent on COVAX and nearly all
the 89 million shots the continent was due to receive through
the initiative by end of this quarter were AstraZeneca from
India. A Reuters tally of deliveries found that just 15 million
have been delivered so far. https://tmsnrt.rs/3sqDhiP
About 63% of people who have received at least one dose of a
coronavirus vaccine are from high income countries, according to
a Reuters tally. More than 45% of Britons have received one
dose, but only 0.4% South Africans.
CHINA AND RUSSIA
China and Russia are primed to step into the breach.
"We have good diplomatic relations with China and Russia and
we are asking if we can have access to their vaccines in April,"
the Philippines' Galvez said.
Both the Philippines and Indonesia are currently relying
heavily on vaccines from China's Sinovac Biotech SVA.O to run
their inoculation drives. The Philippines and Vietnam have both
approved Russia's Sputnik V vaccine, along with more than 50
other countries, mainly developing nations. The Philippines
expects to receive its first batch of Sputnik V in April.
Chinese vaccine maker Sinopharm, meanwhile, plans to produce
its COVID-19 vaccine at a new plant in the United Arab Emirates.
The spate of export curbs is also being felt by wealthier
countries reliant on foreign manufacturing, including Japan,
where the national vaccine rollout has been slow due to the
limited number of Pfizer vaccines shipped from Europe.
"Some people are using vaccines for diplomacy, some people
are trying to prioritize. Some people are buying like three to
five times as many vaccines compared to their population. That's
unnecessary," Japan's vaccine minister, Taro Kono, told Reuters
on Monday in an interview.
"We really need to have the global leaders sit down and
think this is a global issue, not the domestic issue, and try to
solve this together."
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COVID-19 vaccine rollout: charts, maps and eligibility by
country https://tmsnrt.rs/3rCrRXT
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