With the Delta variant spreading rapidly across much of the developing world with an acute shortage of vaccines, new attention is being focused on the promises that wealthy countries have made to provide jabs compared to what they’ve actually delivered. The data tracked by the analytics firm Airfinity accounts for bilateral, non-COVAX donations and the results do not look good for wealthy countries, notably the U.S. and Japan:
- The U.S. has only delivered about half of the shots promised – 15.8 million of 29.8 million – to 11 nations, from neighbors Canada and Mexico to countries further afield such as Malaysia and South Korea.
- Japan’s promise of 30 million jabs to COVAX is yet to arrive, though the country has sent 4.2m of 9.2m planned bilateral donations to four countries – Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
China, according to the report published in The Telegraph newspaper, performed among the best in terms of fulfilling its bilateral vaccine delivery commitments. However, it’s important to note that even though the U.S. and Japan were laggards in the deliveries, the vast majority of their vaccine commitments are through COVAX rather than Chinese or Indian-style bilateral arrangements.
