The World Health Organization (WHO) website reads about COVAX, a global vaccine sharing program of the organization that in this Covid-19 pandemic, no one is safe until everyone is safe.

“As a matter of global equity, as long as many parts of the world are facing extreme vaccine shortages, countries that have achieved high vaccine coverage in their high-risk populations should prioritize global sharing of COVID-19 vaccines through the COVAX facility before proceeding to vaccination of children and adolescents who are at low risk for severe disease.”

– The WHO in a statement (source: CNN Health)

Bipasha van der Zijde writes on The Guardian “While western countries scramble with their booster rollout to deal with the Omicron wave, only 8.4% of people in low-income countries have had at least one Covid vaccination dose. The gap in the vaccination rates between high- and low-income countries is wider than ever. We cannot keep turning a blind eye to it.”

With a fast-moving pandemic, no one is safe, unless everyone is safe.

– The WHO Website

Amanda Glassman, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, told Vox “We’re very far from the 70 percent vaccination rate in low-income countries and reaching that level soon would require a ‘huge lift‘ in terms of financing for booster doses and delivery. We’re still not serious as a world about paying for the stuff and getting it done.”

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According to the Washington Post, researchers from Yale, Brown, the University of Maryland and Stanford, as well as the group Public Citizen, which advocates for improved access to medicines, have reportedly published a new model which aims to “find the cost of vaccinating the world.It could also reveal the huge cost of not vaccinating the world: At least 1 million lives.”

“According to the model, mRNA doses for every person living in lower-middle and low-income countries this year would avert 1.2 million deaths. Third doses for this population, already common in wealthy countries, would avert 1.5 million deaths, the model found.”