With more than half the UK population fully vaccinated and the UK government just a little too eager to declare victory, spare a thought for Cameroon. With a population about half the size of England, Cameroon has — according to Our World in Data — administered just 160,000 doses of vaccine. On a typical day, the UK manages that many before lunch.
I have a certain romantic attachment to Cameroon, but the west African nation is not alone in lacking vaccines. More than six months into the global vaccination campaign, fewer than a quarter of people around the world have received even a single dose of a vaccine. It is no wonder that more people have already died of Covid in 2021 than died from the disease in 2020.
So what can be done? There has been much talk about vaccine equity, but the main problem is not vaccine hoarding or price-gouging. It is that manufacturers can’t make doses fast enough. (If they could, then India, a huge vaccine producer, would have fully vaccinated more than 5 or 6 per cent of its population by now.)