Spain has already donated 50 million doses of the covid-19 vaccine to developing countries through the Covax mechanism, according to the Ministry of Health. Covax is the initiative led by the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations and the Vaccine Alliance to guarantee access to the drug in countries with fewer resources. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, had set the goal of reaching those 50 million doses donated throughout the first quarter of 2022, but this goal has been reached ahead of schedule.
The global imbalance in access to vaccines has been denounced by the WHO as one of the main problems in the vaccination campaign. While Spain has already administered the complete regimen to 90.4% of the population over 12 years of age and is injecting third doses – even the fourth injection for immunosuppressed people has already been approved – other countries in the world have barely immunized their population .
The situation is especially critical in several African countries: according to figures from the repository Our World in Data, Chad has only vaccinated 0.56% of its population; Ethiopia at 1.35% and Nigeria, the most populous country on the continent with 188 million inhabitants, at 2.3%. Africa and Latin America concentrate most of the donations from Spain through Covax, according to Health. Most of these doses, explains the ministry, are the AstraZeneca preparation, the drug that was sidelined in the vaccination strategy after the very rare episodes of thrombosis recorded by some of those who received it.
“We are in a position to demonstrate that it is possible to lead national vaccination and lead global vaccination at the same time,” Sánchez said in November, when the 30 million doses donated to developing countries were reached and the Executive announced the goal of reach 50 million during the first months of 2022. In Sánchez’s opinion, this milestone is something that “we can feel proud of as a country.” “The vaccination gap between north and south is bloody” and for this reason “Spain is not only committed but has long since taken action,” added the president.
Spain is the fourth country in the world that has donated the most doses of the vaccine so far, only behind the United States (193 million), Germany (99) and France (64), all of them countries with more populations.
Poor vaccination rates are not a problem only for the countries that suffer from them, but for the entire planet, since they increase the possibility of new variants appearing, as has happened with the omicron. As explained at the end of 2021 by the director of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, “more than 80% of the world’s vaccines have gone to the G-20 countries, while low-income countries, most of them in Africa, have received only 0.6% of all vaccinations. “We understand and support the responsibility of each Government to protect its own people. It’s natural. But vaccine equity is not charity; it is in the best interest of each country. The longer the vaccine gap persists, the more opportunities this virus has to spread and evolve in ways we cannot predict or prevent. We are all in this together,” added the WHO director.
Spain will continue to donate vaccines, according to Health sources. One of the new donation fronts will be aimed at humanitarian corridors, with some two million doses. For security reasons, the same sources prefer not to reveal the specific destination of these vaccines.
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