by Jack Gerson in California
The New York Times published an article on Dec 25th entitled, One Vaccine Side Effect: Global Inequality. The article argued that cost and fragility of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines would make them virtually inaccessible to much of the world’s population. This is because the vaccine has to be stored and transported at ultra-cold temperatures, around -70oC.
This would increase global inequality, the article suggested, because there are as yet no other authorized vaccines and there are many parts of the least economically developed world where the facilities for ultra-cold storage and transport simply don’t exist. However, that article’s argument was misleading, if not disingenuous.
It has already been challenged by events that the article’s author ought to have known – and almost surely did know – were about to transpire. On December 30, a vaccine created by an Oxford University lab, and produced by the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, received its authorization in the UK. Unlike the Pfizer-Moderna vaccine, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine does not require freezing – it can be stored for up to six months with ordinary refrigeration. (The storage and distribution problems with the Moderna and especially with the Pfizer vaccine have already become all too evident in the problematic and misfiring rollout thus far in the US)
Accessibility and cost factors
AstraZeneca has pledged that billions of doses will be made available at cost (zero profit) in 2021 to developing and middle-income countries, so its cost will be one-tenth that of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. These two factors – accessibility and cost – mean that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine can (and will) be available and utilized massively in poor areas and remote rural areas where the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines could not be distributed because of their fragility, and anyway could not be afforded. (I’m not suggesting three cheers for AstraZeneca. Whatever their business model, my guess is that they’re banking on profiting from this one way or another.)
Also, Chinese authorities have approved Sinopharm, the first of several vaccines that have been undergoing Phase III testing there. It is anticipated that billions of doses will be produced and used in China, Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. I have very little confidence in statements from the Chinese state bureaucracy. My guess, though, is that this vaccine will be effective – the Chinese clearly want to use it as a diplomatic/foreign policy lever.
Together, the Oxford-AstraZeneca and the Sinopharm vaccines will likely do what less than a week ago the New York Times article said wouldn’t be done – make billions of doses available globally. And in the course of the next year, it is anticipated that several more vaccines will become available – some of which have also pledged low-cost availability to low-income countries, and some of which will, like the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, only require ordinary refrigeration and therefore will be relatively easy to ship, store, and distribute.
From the US socialist website, Facts for Working People. The original can be found here.
January 2, 2021
