By Haruna Gimba
COVAX facility may be unable to meet up with supplies of vaccine doses to dozens of Lower- Middle Income countries following India’s suspension of exports of its home-made AstraZeneca vaccine until further notice.
Experts say the implications of this development for Nigeria and other countries that depend on the facility are dire.
Recently, India temporarily suspended vaccine exports due to the increased demand for COVID-19 vaccines at home.
Speaking during a virtual media briefing on COVID-19, Director-General of WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said it is not an export ban.
“The number of cases in India is on the increase, so they need more vaccines to use locally, and that’s understandable.”
He said the WHO was in talks with India to ensure “a balance so they can use locally (and) at the same time continue to provide other countries vaccines from the Serum Institute of India.”
The COVAX Facility had notified participating economies that deliveries of doses from the Serum Institute of India will be delayed in March and April.
The Serum Institute of India has been supplying millions of doses of AstraZeneca vaccine to countries around the world, as well as COVAX.
“Separately, participating economies in the COVAX Facility that have been allocated doses from the AstraZeneca manufacturing network have been notified that some first deliveries anticipated in March will now take place in April,” the COVAX updates to participants read in part.
The update noted that in this early phase of COVID-19 vaccine roll-out, vaccine manufacturers require time to scale and optimise their production processes.
In addition to vaccine doses, COVAX is also urgently seeking some $2.3bn to be able to procure and close the deals it has already struck with vaccine manufacturers.
As reported by the AFP, “AstraZeneca, which uses a novel supply chain network with sites across multiple continents, is working to enable initial supply to 82 countries through COVAX in the coming weeks.
“COVAX retains its objective of supplying initial doses of vaccines to all participating economies in the first half of the year before ramping up significantly in the second half of 2021.
Health Reporters gathered that COVAX has shipped vaccines to over 50 countries and economies.
Meanwhile, many countries who invested in COVAX in good faith have been left frustrated because of the bilateral deals that have left COVAX short.
Recall that Nigeria had received 3.94 million doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccines from the COVAX Facility on March 2; even as the WHO called for countries and companies worldwide to immediately share 10 million doses of coronavirus vaccines with the COVAX scheme to deliver jabs to poorer nations.
Meanwhile, medical experts who spoke with PUNCH Newspaper said the development could lead to apathy and worsen vaccine hesitancy. This is even as the Association of Hospital and Administrative Pharmacists of Nigeria called on the government to set up industries that can produce raw materials for the production of pharmaceutical products in the country.
A Nigerian-born epidemiologist and population health scientist at Harvard University, Dr. Ibraheem Abioye, said, “First, I would hope the second shot of those who took the first shot to be stored in the country already.
“The US had a similar debate about whether to administer the first shot with all the doses they had received or store the two doses.
“It certainly could lead to apathy and worsen vaccine hesitancy if people believe the government is not getting its acts right. Making vaccination convenient is one of the important ways to prevent hesitancy and improve uptake,” Abioye said.
The epidemiologist, however said one vaccine shot is better than none for the individual, even though it is suboptimal.
“If the goal is to reach herd immunity through vaccination, it may be harder, and we may need far more people to be vaccinated
“One of the goals of vaccination is to reach herd immunity. To reach herd immunity through vaccination, one of the parameters is the extent of protection any one person receives and the proportion of the population that receives that protection.
“If the extent of protection reduces, the proportion of the population needs to go up to reach the same threshold we had planned. All of this assumes that the vaccines prevent spread of the disease, which we don’t know for sure yet,” he said.
Asked what Nigeria could learn from this when it comes to drug security, the National Chairman, AHAPN, Dr. Kingsley Amibor, stressed the need for government to set up industries that can produce raw materials for production of pharmaceutical products in the country.
“The Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria and the AHAPN have been advocating for a long time for medicine security in Nigeria. We have urged the government to set up industries that can produce raw materials for production of pharmaceutical products in Nigeria, but that has not materialised yet,” he said.
Amibor added that almost all the raw materials for pharmaceutical production in Nigeria are imported from foreign countries, specifically India and China; noting, “this does not augur well for medicine security.”
Recalling, he said when COVID-19 exploded globally in 2020, India shut down exports of both raw materials and finished products and that the action created a serious problem for pharmaceutical industries in Nigeria.
“Most of our pharmaceutical industries exhausted their stock of medicines and the prices skyrocketed in response to demand.
“Even products like hand gloves and face masks were affected but it’s a bit better. By now, Nigeria should be able to boast of 70-95 percent of our drugs production locally, but that has not been the case up till now and that is very unfortunate.
“I call on the government to endeavour to set up a petrochemical plant as a starting point for the production of raw materials,” Amibor said.
