COVID-19 vaccine supply shortages, storage temperature requirements, inadequate public health infrastructure and nationalism will make it difficult for low-income and conflict-affected countries to vaccinate their residents in 2021, the International Rescue Committee said Jan. 12.
Covax — the international effort to expedite COVID-19 vaccine development and ensure equitable distribution — predicts vaccines will reach at most 20 percent of people in low-income countries by the end of 2021.
Inequitable global COVID-19 distribution will especially affect refugees and internally displaced people, as this population of more than 80 million people are often mobile and excluded from vaccination efforts.
Many human rights organizations, including the International Rescue Committee, encourage higher-income countries to support global immunity from COVID-19 by sharing intellectual property and technology related to the vaccine rollout process so that low-income countries can manufacture vaccines domestically.
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