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within countries, no community is safe until every commu-
nity is safe,” the Western Pacific Office said WHO has said in
response to questions from Islands Business.
“There’s some vaccine nationalism happening” agrees Sunia
Soakai, who is working on the COVID response as part of the
Pacific Community’s (SPC) Public Health Team.
“This is why COVAX was set up, to try and ensure there
is equitable distribution of the vaccine,” he says. “It has to
some extent achieved that objective.” And are Pacific Islands
getting vaccines in sufficient quality quickly enough? “If you
asked me if I was at a country level, at a national health
administration, my response would be that it is too small, it is
too slow.
“In an ideal world there would be enough supply for ev-
eryone to be vaccinated, but that hasn’t happened. There
was some thinking that by 2021 most of the Pacific would be
vaccinated. We’re still using that as an end game…the more
candidates (of vaccines) available, the better.”
A proportion of the Pacific’s vaccines are arriving through
COVAX, a multilateral global access facility based on pooling
procurement. This month, the World Health Assembly heard
that while COVAX has shipped roughly 72 million doses to
some 125 developing nations globally, that’s just 1% of their
combined populations.
Pacific Island nations that have received the AstraZeneca
vaccine through COVAX include Fiji, Solomon Islands, Samoa,
Tonga, Nauru, Papua New Guinea and Tuvalu. Most recently
(May 19), Vanuatu received its first batch of 24,000 doses, and
Kiribati was due to get a batch late May.
However vaccines are increasingly being supplied directly,
by the United States, Australia, New Zealand, France, China
and India. Most recently, Russia has offered vaccines to Vanu-
atu.
Meanwhile WHO’s Western Pacific Office says it has ob-
served recent bilateral deals between high income countries
and manufacturers that have signed up to the COVAX Facility.
“We’ve observed that companies will give priority to bilateral
deals, which in this initial period of supply constraints inevita-
bly affects the availability of batches that could have gone to
COVAX AMC countries.
“This is why WHO has been advocating for a coordinated
global plan. The current piecemeal approach favours those
who can pay most and leads to some populations already
vaccinating younger people while (many) others haven’t even
started vaccinating health workers and high-risk groups.”
Photos: Supplied: UNICEF, WHO, Fiji Government.
The QUAD
In the Pacific, the QUAD nations—Australia, India, Japan and
it will be some time before enough people are vaccinated the United States— are cooperating on the vaccine roll out to
in some Pacific countries to consider relaxing strict border keep the region “safe, stable and secure” tweeted Australian
restrictions. Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
“WHO would also like to stress that although global vaccine This effort has been somewhat hampered by the tragic rise
demand vastly exceeds supply, we must continue to work in cases in India, where more than 300,000 people have died
towards equitable distribution to ensure all countries have as a result of COVID-19. It means the Serum Institute of India
their most vulnerable groups protected, as soon as possible.
Until all countries are safe, no country is safe; and even Continued on page 22

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