Earlier this year, CARE warned that, absent significant investments in both global vaccine procurement and delivery, the COVID pandemic would morph, worsen and become endemic to the most vulnerable people in the world’s lowest-income countries. This was not a prediction I would have hoped to see come true, but here we are.
The global trajectory of the pandemic, the emergence of new variants, vaccine hesitancy, and the lack of urgent action and resourcing to stem the tide of the pandemic, all mean we are facing a third year of living under the thumb of this virus.
But the COVID-19 pandemic is today as much a crisis of apathy as it is a health crisis.
Millions have already died, and hundreds of thousands more continue to die, while vaccines remain out of reach for billions of people. To date, less than 2 percent of people in low-income countries have received at least one shot, but we need to vaccinate 70 percent of the global population.
To do this, we need at least 14 billion doses – not just procured, but in the arms of the world’s most vulnerable people. Equitable vaccine delivery is the only way we can beat this pandemic, but we are nowhere close to where we need to be.