Spurred by the supply shortage worldwide, the apparent inequality on the distribution of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines among the countries is slowly becoming a "larger" issue, vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. revealed Monday night, March 1.
Galvez reported this to President Duterte as he attended the latter's weekly public address, hours after he took the Chinese-made vaccine from Sinovac Biotech Ltd.
"The global vaccine inequality is becoming a larger issue. There is an increase pressure to these countries to donate surplus supply as part of efforts to combat COVID-19," Galvez said.
He noted that only 10 countries have accounted for the 75 percent of total vaccinations made globally, among them are the United States and other rich European countries.
So far, Galvez claimed that 22 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered around the world at a phase of five million doses daily. He claimed this will take the world three years to vaccinate the entire global population.
"It will be difficult for us to achieve a total global immunity. We need at least 10 million doses daily so that we can do it in two years," he said.
Galvez' data was smaller compared to data culled by foreign academic institutions. For instance, the University of Oxford's "Our World in Data" project recorded more than 244.2 million vaccine doses that were administered worldwide, according to a report from the New York Times on March 1.
To address this issue, Galvez said the United States, Israel, and the European Union (EU) have already committed to provide three to five percent of their vaccine supplies to developing countries.
The country began its vaccination rollout on Monday using the 600,000 doses of vaccines from Sinovac Biotech Ltd. The vaccines used in the rollout were donations to the country by the Chinese government.
The government expects the delivery of its procured vaccines within the month, including one million vaccine doses from Sinovac and around three million vaccine doses from British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca.