Poor countries' inability to immunize against COVID-19 a disaster for rich countries

The world is on the brink of a scientific achievement – one COVID-19 vaccine (maybe more) will likely be ready by early next year – but we're also on the brink of a real strategic failing: It has to do with the manufacture and distribution of these vaccines. Right now, that effort is an international bidding war. It almost resembles the cutthroat market for ventilators and personal protective equipment (PPE) at the beginning of the pandemic.

Countries are cutting deals with pharmaceutical companies, securing the right to buy vaccine doses as soon as they're produced. And like in all bidding wars, the wealthiest bidders are winning: Already, the world's high-income nations have secured enough vaccine doses to cover more than twice their populations.

But what about the low- and lower-middle income nations of the world? This is a group of countries ranging from South Sudan to Nicaragua to Myanmar. They're home to nearly half of all human beings, and they don't have the purchasing power to cut big deals with pharmaceutical companies. As things stand now, these countries won't have nearly enough doses. They'll only be able to cover 12 percent of their people.

This is a disaster in the making for poorer countries. But that's obvious.

What's less obvious, but equally true, is that it's also a disaster for rich countries.

New modeling from Northeastern University helps illustrate why. The researchers there analyzed two scenarios. In one, vaccines are distributed to all countries based on their population size. Then there's another scenario that approximates what's happening now: 50 rich countries get the first 2 billion doses of vaccine. In this scenario, the virus continues to spread unchecked for four months in three quarters of the world. And almost twice as many people die.

Of course, poor countries would feel the most pain. But rich countries wouldn't be immune. We'd all become Australia and New Zealand. Both have gone long stretches with very few cases inside their borders, but their economies remain depressed because their trading partners are on lockdown. And occasionally, a new carrier of the virus makes his way across the South Pacific, creating new clusters of the disease. Those clusters grow and spread. Schools and offices are shut down again.

Even with an oversupply of vaccine, wealthy nations risk re-infection in this way. Because not everybody will choose to be vaccinated. No country can become a fortress in a pandemic. The only way to eliminate the threat of this disease somewhere is to eliminate it everywhere.

The most urgent task is closing this vaccine gap between rich and poor countries.

If you lead a wealthy country, success doesn't look like being able to vaccinate every person inside your borders and still having warehouses full of vaccine to spare. That's what failure looks like. Success is purchasing enough vaccine supply for your people – and for the wider world that can't afford to.

This is where the ACT Accelerator can help. It's an initiative supported by organizations like Gavi and the Global Fund. Not many people have heard of them, but they have spent two decades becoming experts in the task of delivering vaccines, diagnostics, and drugs to poor countries. They have technical ability to solve this problem. They just don't have the financing yet.