Without quick action, 100M COVID-19 vaccine doses could expire

If quick action is not taken to transfer COVID-19 vaccines from high-income countries to low- and middle-income nations, 100 million doses could expire, according to Gordon Brown, World Health Organization ambassador for global health financing and former U.K. prime minister.

Speaking Thursday, Brown criticized wealthy countries for stockpiling vaccine doses when lower-income countries are desperately trying to secure them.

"To have the vaccines available in one half of the world, and yet to deny them to the other half of the world, is one of the greatest international public policy failures imaginable. And it's a moral catastrophe of historic proportions that will shock future generations," he said in a press briefing.

Unused doses: Brown said under current projections, high-income countries will stockpile 600 million unused vaccines by the end of December and almost 1 billion by February. In high-income countries, the number of unused vaccines already totals 240 million.

The global community’s goal of vaccinating 40% of the populations in all countries by the end of this year has "no chance of being met" without speedy action, he said. Brown added that the world is 500 million vaccines short of reaching that goal, which would require the doses getting to the countries that need them most.

In the wrong hands: In the next 10 days, roughly 500 million vaccine doses will be produced, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the briefing. But wealthy nations — not lower-income countries — are in the vaccine delivery queue for the majority of these doses. He called on wealthy countries to swap their spots in the line.

High-income nations have also failed to quickly deliver vaccines that they’ve pledged to donate. While members of the G-20 group of nations have pledged over 1.2 billion doses to COVAX — the international vaccine-sharing initiative — only 150 million have been delivered, Tedros said.