Against the backdrop of stark vaccine inequities, World Health Organization chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has urged Covid vaccine producers to put the Covax facility, which supplies vaccines to low-income countries, over shareholder profits.

“We continue to call on manufacturers of vaccines that already have WHO Emergency Use Listing to prioritise Covax, not shareholder profit,” he said, adding that vaccines should not be sent to countries that have vaccinated more than 40 per cent of their population until Covax had enough vaccines to help other countries get there.

His call comes as low-income countries face a massive short-supply of vaccines and wealthy countries move ahead on giving booster doses to citizens.

The message also comes as Covaxin, from Bharat Biotech, became the eight vaccine in the WHO’s basket of vaccines validated on counts of safety, efficacy and quality. While he urged vaccine manufacturers to contact the WHO and accelerate the process of emergency use listing for their vaccines, through rolling submissions, he called out the excuses being offered on why low-income countries had only received 0.4 per cent of the world’s vaccines.

Pointing to the suggestion that low-income countries could not absorb vaccines, he said that was not true. “With the exception of a few fragile, conflict-affected and vulnerable countries, most low-income countries are ready to go. The problem is simply that they cannot get the vaccines.”

Another excuse from manufacturers is that low-income countries have not placed orders for vaccines, he said. “Most low-income countries are relying on Covax, which has the money and the contracts to buy vaccines on their behalf. But manufacturers have not played their part. We still don’t know when the manufacturers will deliver,” he said, calling on manufacturers to prioritise their contracts with Covax and the Africa Vaccines Acquisition Trust.

“No more boosters should be administered, except to immunocompromised people. Most countries, with high vaccine coverage, continue to ignore our call for a global moratorium on boosters, at the expense of health workers and vulnerable groups in low-income countries who are still waiting for the first doses,” he pointed out.

Covaxin approval

On Covaxin receiving approval, a WHO representative said the eight vaccines that had received the EUL till date had taken between 40 and 165 days to get approved, while Covaxin took “120 days by the clock”, from July 9, when the submissions were made, to November 3, when the EUL was granted. In fact, it was 90 days, since the relevant data was submitted at the end of July, he said. At a separate interaction, another WHO representative added that they were in talks with Bharat Biotech to get them to supply to Covax.

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