Today, President Biden will formally announce that the U.S. has bought 500 million doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to distribute to 92 lower income countries and the African Union over the next year through the UN's COVAX program. That's enough to give the required two shots to 250 million people, and he will urge other developed nations to step up. There is a complicating factor, however. The Pfizer vaccine must be maintained in super cold conditions, a fact that will challenge the health systems of poor countries:
"Jaehun Jung, a professor of preventive medicine at South Korea’s Gachon University College of Medicine, said the U.S. donations may prove to be a 'huge turning point' in the global fight against COVID-19, but also lamented that the help didn’t come earlier.
He said the extremely cold storage temperatures required for Pfizer shots would also present challenges for countries with poor health systems and infrastructure and called on U.S. officials and the drugmaker to help those nations overcome these challenges. Partially because of these concerns, many of the vaccines currently being used in the developing world are shots that have simpler storage requirements, such as AstraZeneca’s."
The provision of appropriate refrigeration equipment to those countries to enable them to store the Pfizer vaccine at the required super low temperature will have to be part of the vaccination assistance rendered.
The importance of getting vaccines out to underprivileged nations is paramount, as COVID variants are emerging among their populations, such as the deadly Delta variant, which has been identified in India, Vietnam, and recently in both the UK and the U.S., where it now accounts for 6% of new infections.
