Covid vaccine allocation very tough point of contention: Bill Gates

Talking at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council Gates has said the allocation within the US and between the US and other countries would be a very tough point of contention.

Business Desk, ETV Bharat: Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, on Tuesday said that the distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine, whenever it is approved and ready, among different countries across the world may become a major point of contention.

Talking at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council, Gates said: “Possibly 2-3 vaccines have pretty high chances to be approved next year… (but) capacity will take time to ramp up. So, allocation within the US and between the US and other countries would be a very tough point of contention.”

He believed that it could take a couple of years to fully eradicate the pandemic with the vaccine, but the developed countries like the US might attain normalcy sooner than others.

“If you are going for elimination, where we don’t have any more transmission, then that will take 2-3 years… the rich countries, by late next year, can have things going back pretty close to normal – that’s the best case,” said Gates.

To recall, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in June this year announced a five-year, $1.6 billion commitment to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to deliver lifesaving vaccines to the world’s poorest countries.

Gavi has said that it would leverage its two decades of experience in vaccine delivery to deploy potential Covid-19 vaccines to low-income countries when they become available.

Meanwhile, Serum Institute of India (SII) has collaborated with Gavi and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for accelerating its Covid-19 vaccine project. The company’s CEO Adar Poonawalla had earlier announced that SII would be producing up to 100 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine for India and 91 other low- and middle-income countries by 2021.

Russian and Chinese vaccines

Even as the US waits for results of Phase III trials of different vaccine candidates, China and Russia have reportedly already started vaccinating their citizens for protection against Covid-19. But Gates showed little confidence in those vaccines.

“None of their vaccines are in a Phase III trials with a highly regarded regulator overseeing that trial. One of them should pick a quality regulator so that the world may know that if there are any side effects,” said Gates.

“The Western companies are further ahead in doing these Phase III studies,” Gates said, adding: “If those come out well, then I doubt whether any of the Russian and Chinese vaccines will go out of their nations.”