Rich countries line up for Covid-19 vaccine

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2020

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After Pfizer and Moderna vaccines earlier in the month, a third arrives from the University of Oxford. The question now becomes when the vaccines will be distributed and to whom. We’ll hear from Bruce Y Lee, professor at CUNY Graduate School of Public Health, about just how daunting a task a global inoculation programme will be. Meanwhile, Alex de Jonquieres, the head of the Vaccine Alliance Gavi, explains how they’re trying to make sure every country can afford enough of the vaccine to protect their country. But Kate Elder, senior vaccine policy advisor at Doctors without Borders, says there’s nothing to stop richer countries jumping to the front of the queue.

Producer: Frey Lindsay.

(Image credit: Getty Creative)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Today, we've got vaccines
0:07.0	that work, we're told. Now it's a question of who gets them first. More than 80% has already
0:13.1	been bought up by countries like the US, the European Union, Canada, UK, Australia. There's been a scramble. Those who had the deepest pockets
0:23.1	were able to push their way to the front of line first. We're supposed to have learned from past
0:27.7	pandemics to create a more level playing field this time. But have we done it? Never has the world
0:34.0	tried to vaccinate so many people in such a short period of time. This virus doesn't know
0:39.0	any boundaries or borders. So it's important to cover the entire population and not just particular
0:45.0	subgroups of the population or particular countries. That's all to come in Business Daily from the BBC.
0:54.6	I think it's been a great team effort.
0:56.7	I mean, people have been working 24-7 since the beginning of the year.
1:01.3	And I think this is the culmination of that work.
1:04.0	We clearly have a vaccine that is going to be effective and I think going to make a big
1:08.5	dent on this pandemic.
1:09.9	That's so many pangloss of the pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca,
1:13.7	responding to the news on Monday,
1:15.4	that along with the research team at Oxford University,
1:18.1	his company had now joined Pfizer and Moderna
1:20.7	in offering a vaccine that had been successfully trialled.
1:24.4	It's offering a high level of protection from COVID-19, he said, speaking to the BBC's
1:29.7	Justin Webb.
1:30.9	I think one of the real benefits of this vaccine is the fact that we can manufacture it at scale.
1:37.1	It's a relatively easy vaccine to distribute around the world.
	...

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