New Analysis Finds that G7+EU Excess Doses Can Cover 40% Supply Gap in 2021
Author: Andrea Taylor
We are excited to announce the release of new analysis and recommendations through our initiative, the COVID Global Accountability Platform (COVID GAP), a collaboration between Duke University and the Covid Collaborative. There are a plethora of dashboards and datasets on COVID-19 response, including vaccine supply and vaccination coverage, providing detail on what is happening both globally and at the country level. However, the existence of these dashboards is not resulting in actions that meet the pressing needs. The COVID GAP pulls together key data across multiple sources to highlight the need and provide evidence-based recommendations to catalyze effective actions and share promising strategies.
Our latest report focuses on the 40% and 70% vaccination coverage targets, which have been widely endorsed by global leaders but without any action plan to ensure it happens. Drawing on data from our Launch and Scale Speedometer COVID research, as well as the Multilateral Leaders Task Force on COVID-19, and the WHO, we find that 82 countries (including most low-income and African countries) are not on track to meet 40% vaccination coverage by the end of 2021.
At the global level, this is not a supply issue but a distribution issue. The scale up of COVID-19 vaccine production over the past year has been staggeringly successful; the world is now making about 1.5 billion doses a month. We have enough doses to vaccinate far more than 40% of the population in every country. However, much of this supply is concentrated in a small number of wealthy countries, who have more than they can use. Based on supply and vaccination rate data, we expect G7 and EU countries to collectively have more than 830 million excess doses at the end of 2021. Meanwhile, many countries still face significant supply gaps. For the countries that have not yet reached 40% coverage, our analysis indicates that a further 1.05 billion doses are still needed to reach the target. After expected COVAX deliveries in November and December, these countries will still face a gap of 650 million doses.
Driven by this analysis, the COVID GAP team urgently recommends that vaccine makers and donor countries:
- Improve transparency on vaccine production, supply, and allocation to drive accountability and effective vaccination planning – countries need advance notice of delivery schedules
- Allocate increasing supply of vaccines more equitably, through “queue swapping” and fulfilling donation pledges
- Strengthen country-level capacity to ensure doses get from airports into arms as quickly and efficiently as possible
Future analyses will focus on the quantifying the need and tracking commitments for therapeutics, diagnostics, and oxygen, as well as future preparedness. The COVID GAP team is working closely with leaders in low- and middle-income countries as well as multilateral organizations and major funders to build stronger data on the challenges, bottlenecks, and promising strategies to advance access to COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and other resources around the world. We will continue to update the data and insights on the covid19gap.org website, just as we do for the Launch and Scale Speedometer COVID data and will draw on these analyses to develop practical recommendations.
As always, we welcome input on how you are using these analyses and if there are particular areas of focus for our data tracking through Launch and Scale Speedometer or COVID GAP that would be helpful.