When are You Getting Vaccinated
If you're reading this in Europe, the U.S. or one of several other wealthy countries, you will probably have access to a vaccine in 2021, Axios Worldauthor Dave Lawler writes.
- But if you're in a lower-income country, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, you could be waiting until 2023.
The first vaccines to gain regulatory approval in the West — from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna — are bound almost exclusively for wealthy countries, at least in the near term.
- Many rich countries have hedged their bets by buying enough doses of several different vaccine candidates to cover their populations even if some candidates aren't approved.
- If you combine doses purchased and reserved, the U.S. has dibs on nearly one-quarter of the global supply, with 2.6 billion doses, according to a Duke tracker.
The Economist Intelligence Unit projects that the most fortunate countries — including the U.S., U.K., EU and Japan — will spend the first half of 2021 vaccinating priority groups and the second half of the year vaccinating the remainder of their populations.
- In other high-income countries — as well as in countries like China, Brazil, India and Russia that are producing or manufacturing vaccines at scale — mass vaccinations will begin next year but likely continue into early 2022.
What to watch: President-elect Biden has said he'll re-engage with the World Health Organization and restore America's global leadership, but he hasn't spoken about a U.S. role in global vaccine distribution.
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