In record speed, vaccines are here, and more are on their way. Less than a year since the coronavirus began ravaging the world, the first shots are raising hopes for wiping the Covid-19 pandemic from the face of the earth.
Today’s programs in the U.S. and the U.K. are precursors to immunization campaigns intended to reach the planet’s entire population — all 8 billion people in every corner of the globe.
There is reason for optimism. Vaccines are the best, and perhaps only, way to eliminate infectious disease: Smallpox has been eradicated and polio is on the brink, with just two countries where transmission persists. But global vaccine campaigns take time — usually decades — suggesting that even with the latest technologies, money and might behind the unprecedented global drive to knock out Covid-19, the disease is unlikely to be eliminated any time soon.
“I would be surprised to see an actual eradication of this virus now that it’s all over the world,” said Walter Orenstein, associate director of the Emory Vaccine Center in Atlanta and former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s immunization program. “I’d be shocked, given how contagious it is.”
Snags in supply and distribution have already arisen in the opening days of the U.S. campaign, and the U.K., the first Western country to begin immunizing, vaccinated just 138,000 people in its first week. Meanwhile, Europe has yet to start inoculations, and probably won’t do so until after Christmas.
Concerns are growing over how long it will take to immunize vast swaths of the world beyond a group of wealthy countries that have snapped up early supplies.
A global program called Covax, which aims to deploy Covid vaccines around the globe, has secured deals with developers including Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca Plc. But some of those supplies are expected to come from an experimental inoculation from Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline Plc that’s been delayed and may not be ready until late next year.
“It’s really, really, really complicated to make sure we get those vaccines produced and distributed in an equitable way globally, for both moral and economic reasons,” Mark Suzman, chief executive officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, told reporters on a Dec. 9 call.
Suzman pointed to research showing that broad access to vaccines could deliver significant economic benefits to all countries and save many lives. Since wealthy nations will likely have more than enough doses to vaccinate their entire populations, they should consider the reallocation of some supplies to those most in need, he said.
Mass vaccination has been one of the most successful public health interventions in the world and has played an important part raising U.S. life expectancy by more than 50% over the last century. About a third of U.S. deaths in 1900 occurred in children under age 5, many of them from diseases like smallpox, measles and whooping cough that are now preventable by immunization.
Some new vaccines have also gained quick and widespread use, like shots that prevent pneumococcal infections that can cause severe illness in children and adults. Introduction of the shingles vaccination has offered prevention of the painful disease to millions of people over the past two decades.
A veteran of the World Health Organization’s effort to eradicate smallpox, Orenstein would often immunize himself in front of entire villages to assuage safety fears. The agency resolved to try to eradicate the disease in 1959 when it still afflicted many developing countries, but the effort didn't kick into high gear until 1967 when more funds and personnel were committed by the WHO and its
members.
The smallpox effort initially targeted entire populations, but that turned out to be impractical, recalled William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University infectious-disease specialist who has advised the government on vaccination. The turnaround came when the strategy switched to identifying cases and then vaccinating everyone in proximity, sometimes hundreds of households.