- French President Emmanuel Macron is urging Europe and the U.S. to allocate up to 5% of their current vaccine supplies to developing countries, saying failure to share vaccines fairly would entrench global inequality. He hopes the push could turn into some kind of international public policy, but it could be hard to convince populations to send their vaccines elsewhere. Britain also announced it will donate a majority of future surplus vaccines to poorer nations ahead of today's G7 summit, which will focus on speeding up a coordinated effort on global vaccination.
- Macron's proposal was quickly rejected by the Biden administration, which said vaccinating Americans was its top priority and it wouldn't donate doses until there was enough supply. President Biden is still expected to announce today the U.S. will spend $4B on international COVID vaccination efforts, which was appropriated by Congress as part of last coronavirus relief bill approved in December. Half of that sum would be distributed "almost immediately" to COVAX, while the rest would be doled out in stages through 2022.
- What is COVAX? The program is part of a global scheme co-led by an international vaccine alliance called Gavi, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, as well as the WHO. It was established to ensure equitable vaccine access for every country in the world, and aims to deliver 2B doses of safe, effective vaccines by the end of 2021. Only after each nation receives vaccine doses for 20% of its population would countries' COVID risk profiles be considered in a subsequent phase of vaccine distribution.
- Returns of the vaccine makers: Shares of Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) have largely held in the $30-range over the past year, despite being the first to receive FDA emergency approval for its COVID jab. Many reasons have been given for the lack of movement, such as lower profitability versus prescription drugs and downward pressure on margins due to public interest in facilitating vaccine access. However, the opposite effect has occurred with partner BioNTech (NASDAQ:BNTX), which has seen its stock rise 275% since it first began work on a COVID shot in January 2020. The only other vaccine approved in the U.S. is from Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA), which has seen its shares soar nearly 750% since it started working around-the-clock to develop a vaccine at the same time as BioNTech.
- At the opening of the WHO's Executive Board meeting last month, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned of a "catastrophic moral failure" in vaccine distribution.