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WEEKLY COVID VACCINE RESEARCH UPDATE Saturday, September 11, 2021 Confirmed Vaccine Purchases Confirmed Donations (by recipient, includes pledges) High income countries 6.9 B 6.5 B Upper  middle income countries 2.5 B 54 M Lower middle income countries 2.6 B 64 M Low income countries 238 M 63 M COVAX 2.5 B 741 M WORLDWIDE TOTALS 14.8 B 927 M INSIGHTS Will Cuba’s home-grown vaccine strategy pay off? Author: Blen Biru Cuba has become the leader of COVID-19 vaccine development in Latin America – producing a total of five vaccine candidates so far, four of which are awaiting submission to WHO’s Emergency Use Listing Procedure (EUL). All of the vaccines have names that express Cubans’ pride in developing successful home-grown vaccines as a small nation: Abdala (named after a patriotic poem), Soberana 1…

WEEKLY COVID VACCINE RESEARCH UPDATE Friday, August 27, 2021 Confirmed Vaccine Purchases Confirmed Donations (by recipient, includes pledges) High income countries 6,867,677,500 6,451,921 Upper  middle income countries 2,469,340,075 46,273,774 Lower middle income countries 3,185,578,000 67,538,436 Low income countries 288,200,00 60,778,812 COVAX 2,534,000,000 730,400,000 WORLDWIDE TOTALS 15,344,795,575 911,442,943 INSIGHTS We need a better plan. Author: Andrea Taylor The past 18 months have shown us what happens when we rely on fragmented responses to a pandemic – the result is an uncoordinated patchwork of insufficient approaches and the continued spread of an ever-mutating virus. It sounds obvious but still needs to be said: pandemics are global and our response must be as well. Together with colleagues at the COVID Collaborative, the Pandemic Action Network, the Center for Global Development, and many others, we…

WEEKLY COVID VACCINE RESEARCH UPDATE Friday, August 20, 2021 High-income country confirmed dose total: 6.8 billion Upper-middle-income country total: 2.5 billion Lower-middle-income country total: 3.2 billion Low-income country total: 288 million COVAX total: 3.3 billion Total worldwide confirmed purchases of Covid-19 vaccines: 15 billion doses INSIGHTS Are third shots vs first shots a “false choice?” Then the US and other high-income countries should prove it. Author: Andrea Taylor The US has continued to advance plans for boosters since we wrote about the issue earlier this month, with an announcement that a third dose will be offered to all residents (not just the highly vulnerable), eight months after the second dose. Israel has already begun its booster campaign, while Germany, France, and the UK are expected to begin boosters for the elderly and immunocompromised next month. Data from…

WEEKLY COVID VACCINE RESEARCH UPDATE Friday, July 23, 2021 High-income country confirmed dose total: 6.3 billion Upper-middle-income country total: 2.4 billion Lower-middle-income country total: 3.1 billion Low-income country total: 331 million COVAX total: 3.2 billion Total worldwide confirmed purchases of Covid-19 vaccines: 14 billion doses INSIGHTS Delta variant poses a global threat despite increased production of vaccines.  Author: Joslin Coggan While businesses return to full capacity and mask mandates are lifted in much of the US and several other countries with relatively high vaccination rates, there is growing concern about the impact from the rapidly spreading COVID-19 delta variant. The delta variant was identified in India in December 2020 and was the dominant variant during the country’s devastating outbreak in the spring of 2021. At the beginning of June 2021, the delta variant had spread to 62 countries. The…

WEEKLY COVID VACCINE RESEARCH UPDATE Friday, July 16, 2021 High-income country confirmed dose total: 6.1 billion Upper-middle-income country total: 2.1 billion Lower-middle-income country total: 2.8 billion Low-income country total: 270.2 million COVAX total: 2.5 billion Total worldwide confirmed purchases of Covid-19 vaccines: 12.9 billion doses INSIGHTS How can LMIC countries prepare to receive and efficiently administer large numbers of COVID-19 vaccine doses? Author: Andrea Taylor Of the 3.5 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses that have been administered globally, only about 69 percent of the doses have been administered in low and middle income countries (LMICs) with 84 percent of the world’s population. Wealthy nations’ over-purchasing of the limited vaccine supply left LMIC nations without access to COVID-19 vaccine doses. However, as these nations start to vaccinate their populations and curb the pandemic within their borders, we are seeing increased donations from over-supplied…