RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The New York Times published a report on the accessibility of vaccination against the coronavirus around the world.
According to the report, a total 43 countries, “mostly high-income countries,” are on track to complete inoculation of the population within a year. Among these, only four are in the Americas: the United States, the Dominican Republic, Chile and Uruguay.
The list includes a large number of European countries, as well as Israel, Mongolia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia from Asia, and Morocco from Africa.
In contrast, there are 148 countries, which “according to their vaccination rate,” will take more than a year to immunize their population.
Moreover, according to data collected by the Our World in Data website and reported by the New York Times, there are currently 67 countries (mostly in Africa) which have not yet had access to vaccines.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this: Covax, the global vaccine exchange initiative, was intended to prevent unequal access (…) Wealthier nations would buy doses through the Covax and poorer nations would receive them for free. But wealthy nations quickly undermined the program by securing their own deals directly with pharmaceutical companies. In many countries, they have reserved enough doses to immunize their own several times over,” the media outlet explains.
Source: Montevideo