In Focus: Vaccine Inequalities: A Selfish World in Times of Crisis
| Author | Benjamin D. Hennig |
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/20419058221091633 |
20 POLITICAL INSIGHT • APRIL 2022
In Focus
Vaccine Inequalities:
A Selfish World in
Times of Crisis
In early 2021, less than a year after the
start of the COVID pandemic, the United
Kingdom became the rst major country
to approve and licence a newly developed
Coronavirus vaccine. This marked the starting
gun in a vaccine race for global supremacy that
started as several pharmaceutical companies
began to release their vaccines on the world
markets. Many countries had already pre-
ordered signicant numbers of doses ahead
of their availability, especially in North America
and Europe.
In addition to daily case numbers and
deaths, the number of vaccinated people
in the population became the latest metric
meticulously followed in day-to-day news
reports. According to the global vaccine tracker
published by
Our World in Data
which collates
country-by-country data on vaccinations, 61.9
per cent of the world population has received
at least one dose of a COVID vaccine at the time
of writing in mid-February 2022. More than 10
billion doses had been administered globally.
With rising shares of the population being
vaccinated, the success of the vaccination
programmes became visible. Declining
numbers of newly recorded deaths, especially
among the vaccinated population, appeared
to provide a pathway out of the pandemic.
With the advent of the more contagious
new Omicron variant of the virus, case rates
started rising again to unprecedented new
levels. Yet, especially in parts of the world with
high vaccination rates, the new variant came
with less severe consequences and, crucially,
lower death rates. In the western media, this
new stage was therefore widely dubbed a
‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’.
The charts in this feature show the timeline
of vaccination eorts undertaken within each
major world region, by showing the daily
vaccinations per one million people from
the start of the rst vaccination programmes
in the United Kingdom in late 2020 up to
February 2022.
Unsurprisingly, those countries that could
aord a quick roll-out of an inoculation
campaign led the vaccine table. This ‘vaccine
nationalism’ also served political purposes.
The pace of vaccination across many wealthy
nations, including the United States, the United
Kingdom and many other European countries,
was remarkably similar at the beginning of the
roll-out. Slight delays in the early months were
mostly down to aggressive inghting between
these countries over the still scarce resource. As
production capacities went up, most countries
in Europe and North America (including Central
America and the Caribbean) quickly caught up,
before the eorts began to stall due to vaccine
hesitancy.
Among high income countries, only those
in Oceania were late in the race: previously
among the most successful in keeping the
pandemic at bay through massive restrictions
at their international borders, Australia and
New Zealand’s vaccination programmes only
took o during the second half of 2021, a time
when large shares of the European and North
American population were already vaccinated.
Benjamin D. Hennig maps the global COVID vaccination roll-out and
analyses the politics behind the stark differences in vaccination rates
around the world.
Yet once they began, Oceania’s vaccination
eorts were higher than anywhere else in the
world.
The emerging economies in Asia and South
America also started their vaccination eorts
later, though then at steady overall high
vaccination rates that have seen them emerge
as the major world regions with the highest
share of people vaccinated globally. At the time
of writing, 81 per cent of South America’s and
72 per cent of Asia’s population had received
at least one vaccination dose – compared to
more vaccine hesitant Europe’s 68 per cent.
The most successful vaccination campaign
was led by Cuba which has in total
administered vaccines to 94 per cent of its
population. This marks a special case among
many of the other global programmes as Cuba,
like China and Russia, mostly produces its own
vaccine rather than administering those from
the global players that most wealthy nations
utilise in their programmes.
A major component of the failure of a
concerted global vaccination campaign was
the lack of progress of vaccination roll-out on
the African continent, home to almost 18 per
cent of the world’s population. Only 17 per
cent of these have received at least one dose of
a vaccination. In comparison to the overall roll-
out trends in all other regions, maximum daily
vaccinations per one million people hardly ever
exceeded levels of 1500 a day. These are gures
that in all other regions were quickly surpassed
in the early stages of their roll-outs.
After a period of vaccine hoarding by the
wealthier parts of the world, the UN-backed
Covax programme nally helped to bring more
vaccination doses to low income countries.
This is especially important since almost all
vaccines on the African continent are until
Political Insight April 2022 BU.indd 20Political Insight April 2022 BU.indd 20 01/03/2022 10:2801/03/2022 10:28
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