Airfinity estimates the G7 and EU will have 1 billion more vaccines than they need by the end of 2021, 10% of these are expected to expire this year too.
This figure increases when you factor in the time needed to administer vaccine programmes in Lower Income Countries (LICs) and Lower Middle Income Countries (LMICs). Many of these countries will refuse vaccines that don’t have at least a two month shelf life.
Once this two month shelf life is considered, the number of doses which could potentially be wasted reaches 241 million by the end of 2021, which is a quarter of the G7 and EU surplus stock.
The available vaccines in the G7 and EU - combined with already purchased doses and COAX deliveries - are enough for LICs and LMICs to vaccinate 70% of their populations by May 2022.
Airfinity estimates that total global Covid-19 cases are likely to exceed 400 million by mid-2022 and the immediate redistribution of vaccines could potentially avert nearly 1 millions deaths from the virus in that time frame.
Today’s analysis comes ahead of a Global Vaccine Summit which will be chaired by US President Joe Biden on Wednesday 22nd September.
Co-founder and CEO of Airfinity, Rasmus Bech Hansen says, “The world has witnessed two extraordinary scientific achievements in the pandemic: The fast development of highly effective vaccines and the unprecedented scale up of production.
“For the world to get the full benefit of this, our data shows, we need a third equally unprecedented achievement: A large scale, rapid, globally coordinated, science driven vaccination campaign.”
DOWNLOAD AIRFINITY'S COVID-19 VACCINE EXPIRY FORECAST FOR 2021 AND 2022
Notes:
The analysis of excess vaccines assumes the G7 nations and EU continue their vaccination roll outs and administer booster shots to everyone over the age of 12.
The country breakdown of the 100 million vaccines set to expire by the end of 2021 is as follows: Canada 12%, European Union 41%, Japan 1%, United Kingdom 13% and United States 32%.
The country breakdown of the 241 million vaccines which could potentially be wasted is as follows: Canada 8%, European Union 44%, Japan 3%, United Kingdom 9% and United States 36%.