Procuring vaccines against Covid-19 for poor countries like the Philippines may take longer if rich countries would aim for 100 percent vaccination for their citizens, rather than achieve “herd immunity,” according to the Ateneo Center for Economic Research and Development (ACERD).
During the Ateneo Eagle Watch forum “Preparing your Business and Institution in Prioritizing for Recovery,” ACERD Senior Fellow and John Gokongwei School of Management, Dean Luis F. Dumlao said at the current pace, the earliest the common Filipino could get the vaccine is November.
Dumlao, however, said if rich countries will target herd immunity, or vaccinating only at least 80 percent of their populations, the ordinary Filipino would be able to get the jab earlier, perhaps around September this year.
“What we really need is only 80 percent to get herd immunity and if these countries become more considerate and stop thinking of 100 percent vaccination and start thinking of 80 percent vaccination, then we will get our vaccination, Juan dela Cruz will get his vaccination in September as opposed to November,” Dumlao said.
Based on the model, Dumlao plotted that countries such as Luxembourg and Ireland will get the vaccines first followed by the ordinary citizens in the US and those in China by April. India is expected to get their vaccine by February 2022, assuming that countries will aim for 100 percent vaccination.
Currently, for every 100 people, rich countries bought 254 vaccines, while in poor countries, for every 100 people, only 14 vaccines have been secured.
This is lamentable, he said, especially in the case of the Philippines, which has already detected the presence of another Covid-19 variant in the past week. At the current rate of infections, Dumlao estimated that the country could have 75,000 active cases by the end of February.
However, Dumlao said, it may still be too early to tell whether this will become a reality for the country. One of the reasons is the gap in data monitoring since data collection may have stopped during the holidays, which may perhaps explain the recent increase in active cases.
Dumlao said, nonetheless, the hope of Filipinos is for these rich countries to give away the vaccines they did not use to poor countries. He said institutions such as the USAID and the AusAid may consider sharing the vaccines they have.
“Once they have secured vaccination for their population, they would have excess, which experience goes, what they would do is, in the case of the US, you have the USAID, in the case of Australia, we have the AusAid, and so on and so forth,” he added.
“They’re not buying to hog them but they are buying as if eventually, the excess will be shared to the rest of the world. And it does not help if the rhetoric is bad. If we are bad mouthing our partners, if we do that, it’s very difficult for us to get the donations that we need from these countries with excess vaccinations,” Dumlao said.
Meanwhile, Dumlao said the current pace of vaccine development is encouraging based on data from the Manila-based multilateral development bank Asian Development Bank (ADB).
Dumlao said that based on ADB data, the seven vaccines cost around $3 to $70 per dose. Two vaccines, the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson (J&J) have only one dose and costs the least at $3 to $4 per dose and $10 per dose, respectively.
The most expensive is the $70 worth Fierce vaccine developed by China-based Sinopharm. This is followed by Moderna which will cost $32 to $37 per dose.
AstraZeneca and J&J manufacturing capacities are 2.32 billion doses and 1 billion doses by December 2021. Sinopharm was able to manufacture 0.2 billion as of December last year, while Moderna expects to produce 1 billion doses by December this year.
“If these manufacturing capacities are achieved as indicated here, then 5 billion of 8 billion, the population of the whole world is around 8 billion, then 5 billion of 8 billion will complete the vaccination by the end of 2021,” Dumlao said.
Image credits: Bloomberg photo