Month: December 2021

The Global Accountability Platform (COVID GAP) blog series. December 13, 2021 By Beth Boyer, Ethan Chupp, and Andrea Taylor For much of the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines have been the primary focus to slow the spread of the virus. However, amid rising infection rates and low global vaccination coverage, effective therapeutics that can prevent severe disease could be a game changer. But only if we learn from the inequitable vaccine rollout and ensure global access from the beginning. Several treatments have been approved but are primarily used in high-income countries. Monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapy has proven effective at preventing high-risk patients with mild-to-moderate disease from developing severe disease and being hospitalized. But mAb therapy is expensive, and is administered via infusion or injection which requires medical infrastructure, trained staff, equipment (that can add…

The Global Accountability Platform (COVID GAP) blog series. December 3, 2021 By Beth Boyer and Andrea Taylor South Africa and a handful of other African nations recently asked vaccine makers to hold off on shipping more COVID-19 vaccines for the time being. Leaders of wealthy countries, accused of hoarding vaccine doses, are using this to make the case that vaccine hesitancy rather than supply is to blame for low vaccination coverage across sub-Saharan Africa. This comes amid the emergence of the Omicron variant, first identified by South Africa’s genome sequencing experts, which has reignited calls to urgently address the inequitable distribution of vaccines. The demand-not-supply framing overlooks the more complicated reality of vaccination campaigns for countries across Africa. In fact, hesitancy is only part of the problem. According to a survey conducted earlier this year by the…