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NEW YORK. – UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed yesterday for US$8 billion to help equitably vaccinate 40 percent of people in all countries by the end of the year, as the World Health Organisation (WHO) launched a plan that aims to inoculate 70 percent of the world by mid-2022.

Guterres urged the Group of 20 rich countries to deliver on their “desire to get the world vaccinated” at a summit in Rome later this month.

“Not to have equitable distribution of vaccines is not only a question of being immoral, it is also a question of being stupid,” he said at a joint news conference with WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

So far, more than 6.3 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered globally.

But more than half of the world has yet to receive at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to Our World in Data, and less than 5 percent of Africans have been fully vaccinated, according to the continent’s top public health official.

The WHO plan calls for countries with high vaccine coverage to allow expected deliveries of additional doses to first go to the COVAX global sharing program and the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT) for distribution to where they are more urgently needed. It also wants the richer nations to fulfil and accelerate vaccine dose-sharing and donation commitments to COVAX, and make new pledges.

And it calls on drugmakers to prioritise and urgently fulfil Covax and AVAT vaccine contracts, be transparent about monthly production data and give clear monthly schedules for supplies to Covax, AVAT and low and low-middle income countries.

“The whole UN system has shown leadership, but we have no power,” Guterres said. “The power is in the countries that produce vaccines or might produce them, and in the companies.”

Tedros also questioned why countries had been unable to agree on a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights on Covid-19 vaccines and therapies at the World Trade Organisation.

“If we cannot use it now during this unprecedented situation, when do we use the TRIPS waiver?” Tedros said. “Why do we even, in the first place, have these IP waivers . . . if we’re not going to use it in such conditions?”

“Manufacturers and governments should really ask themselves this question,” he said.

Meanwhile, Moderna plans to invest up to US$500 million to build a factory in Africa to make up to 500 million doses of mRNA vaccines each year, including its Covid-19 shot, as pressure grows on the pharmaceutical industry to manufacture drugs on the continent.

African countries and the World Health Organization (WHO) have been urging drugmakers for months to set up vaccine plants on the continent to help it secure supplies of Covid-19 shots that have been hoovered up by wealthier nations.

As yesterday, only about 4,5 percent of Africans had been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the continent’s top public health official, John Nkengasong.

Moderna’s proposed site is expected to include drug substance manufacturing as well as bottling and packaging capabilities. The US drugmaker said it would begin the process of deciding the country and location soon.

“We expect to manufacture our COVID-19 vaccine as well as additional products within our mRNA vaccine portfolio at this facility,” CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement.

Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said he had not seen the Moderna statement and the company had not consulted with him.

At a news conference, he welcomed any efforts to address the continent’s medium- to long-term needs, but said Moderna’s plans would not solve its problems securing Covid-19 vaccine doses now.

Bartholomew Akanmori, a vaccine regulation officer at the WHO’s Africa office, said the WHO hoped Moderna’s plant would help with diseases of public health interest other than Covid-19 and which had not yet received research and development support.

Moderna’s move comes as a debate rages between drugmakers and governments about waiving intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines to help end the pandemic and give more developing countries access to shots. – Reuters.