In an effort perhaps best described as
vaccine
imperialism, several powerful organizations from the West collaborated over the past three years to provide COVID-19 vaccine doses for people from low- and middle-income countries whether they wanted them or not.
The
Access to COVID-19 Tools, or ACT, Accelerator
is a program born from an April 2020 event organized by the World Health Organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the European Commission, and France to help the world fight COVID-19 through diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccines, and the strengthening of health systems. The vaccine component of this program is known as
COVAX
.
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COVAX is
collaboratively managed
by several interconnected organizations, including the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, Gavi, and WHO. Together, they sought to accelerate the development and manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccine doses and ensure their equitable distribution around the world with a particular focus on low- and middle-income countries. One of their
goals
was to vaccinate 70% of the world’s population. Supporters viewed this as key to ending the pandemic.
Although it was spurned by former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden would
declare
the United States’s support for COVAX in a January 2021 national security memorandum. The U.S. would also
commit
$4 billion to it.
More recently, with much of the world seemingly moving on from the pandemic, organizations involved in the program have been evaluating COVAX’s efforts, as well as discussing its future role in keeping COVID-19 in check.
An ACT-Accelerator
transition plan
from October 2022 stated, “It is widely recognized that the ACT-Accelerator was a ground-breaking initiative that was instrumental in advancing access to COVID-19 tools during the pandemic” and that lessons learned from the program could be utilized in fighting future pandemics.
However,
critics
— such as former WHO medical officer and scientist David Bell, Elisabeth Paul of the Universite libre de Bruxelles School of Public Health in Belgium, and several of their colleagues from institutions around the globe — have characterized COVAX as an expensive program that failed to meet traditional standards for public health campaigns and criticized it for diverting resources from programs with a greater potential to save lives such as those targeting malaria or HIV.
The populations of many of the low- and middle-income countries targeted by COVAX, they argued, are generally young and have high rates of prior infection. Therefore, they suggest, these are low-risk populations possessing some protection and unlikely to receive much benefit from COVID-19 vaccination.
Many people in low- and middle-income countries likely agreed with this assessment, given the way some associated with COVAX and related programs
fretted
about declining demand for COVID-19 vaccine doses in such countries and the need to combat misinformation and vaccine hesitancy through better messaging to reverse this trend.
More recently, though, it would appear those responsible for COVAX may be changing course, as their October 2022 transition plan suggests a greater focus on vaccinating those most vulnerable to COVID-19 moving forward, although it has
been
reported
that major shifts in COVAX’s strategy would not occur until 2024 and may remain in flux beyond that.
Yet even if COVAX does change course in 2024, this is apparently being done with little, if any, acknowledgment by those responsible for it that the program’s efforts were likely wasteful and misguided.
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Daniel Nuccio is a Ph.D. student in biology and a regular contributor to the College Fix and the Brownstone Institute.
