As Congress and the administration debate future funding for the worldwide COVID-19 response, together with for vaccines, we checked out how the U.S. stacks up in opposition to different donors on serving to to vaccinate the world. Certainly, President Biden has convened international leaders to push for vaccination, amongst different COVID-19 efforts, to assist obtain international vaccination protection of 70% by September 2022, and re-emphasized the U.S.’s international efforts within the lately launched “Nationwide COVID-19 Preparedness Plan”. Right here, we study how a lot funding for vaccines in addition to vaccine doses have been allotted. For funding, we embrace solely monetary commitments made to the COVAX Advance Market Dedication (AMC); whereas a number of donors report having dedicated extra funds exterior of the AMC for vaccine readiness and different actions (together with the U.S., Germany, and Australia), there isn’t a centralized database accessible with such knowledge from all donors. For donated doses, we embrace these doses pledged to COVAX, different multilateral mechanisms such because the African Vaccine Acquisition Belief (AVAT), and bilaterally (see Strategies for extra info). We have a look at the general shares offered by the U.S., in addition to others, and in addition standardize contributions by the scale of donor economies. We discover that whereas the U.S. has contributed way over another donor, its rank falls significantly when standardized by GDP:
- As of March 3, 2022, donors have offered an estimated $11.0 billion in monetary help to the COVAX AMC for vaccination efforts and pledged to donate 2.1 billion doses to COVAX, different multilateral entities, and bilaterally (see Appendix).
- By share of contributions, the U.S. ranks on the prime, accounting for 36% of funding ($4.0 billion) and 41% of pledged doses (857.5 million) (see Figures 1 and a pair of).
- The U.S. share is bigger than its share of world GDP (24%), and considerably above the subsequent largest donor, Germany (at 11% of monetary contributions and eight% of doses).
- Nevertheless, when standardized by the scale of the U.S. economic system (per $1 million GDP), the U.S. now not ranks on the prime, falling in rank for each monetary contributions and pledged doses (see Figures 3 and 4).
- The highest monetary contributor, per $1 million GDP, is Sweden, adopted by Norway, Kuwait, Germany, Iceland, the U.Okay., Canada, Italy, Switzerland, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. ranks 12th in monetary contributions when standardized, and Sweden’s monetary contribution is almost 5 occasions that of the U.S.
- The U.S. falls to sixth when ranked by pledged doses per $1 million GDP and is extra in line, however nonetheless decrease than, different massive economies akin to Germany and France. By this measure, Bhutan ranks first, adopted by the Maldives, Germany, France, New Zealand, after which the U.S.
As Congress and the administration proceed to debate whether or not to offer extra emergency funding for international COVID-19 efforts, this evaluation could provide new perception into concerns for future U.S. help. As we present right here, the U.S. is by far the most important donor in absolute measures, however a lot much less beneficiant when standardized by its economic system. In fact there isn’t a good metric for assessing justifiable share within the context of a worldwide pandemic, and none of those measures (or these utilized by others within the international neighborhood) is ready to absolutely seize each the financial and non-economic advantages that will accrue to all if COVID-19 had been to really be managed. With solely 13% of these in low and center earnings nations having acquired not less than one COVID-19 vaccine dose up to now, the stakes stay fairly excessive.
Monetary knowledge had been obtained from the Gavi COVAX AMC Donor Desk (see right here). Donors could also be offering extra assets for international COVID-19 vaccination exterior of the COVAX AMC as properly (e.g. for vaccine readiness efforts). For instance, the U.S. authorities stories that it has allotted greater than US$800 million, Australia stories allocating not less than US$380 million, and Germany US$245 million. Nevertheless, since there isn’t a centralized database accessible for these contributions for all donors, they aren’t included on this evaluation. We additionally didn’t embrace funding commitments from the World Financial institution or different multilateral improvement banks (the World Financial institution estimates, for instance, that it has offered $3.9 billion in grants for vaccines), that are largely derived from donor governments’ common financing of MDBs however symbolize extra financing.
COVID-19 vaccine dose donation knowledge are from the UNICEF COVID-19 Vaccine Market Dashboard (see right here) and the Gavi Dose Donations Pledge Desk (see right here). The place knowledge from these two sources differed for a person donor, the bigger whole is used. Gross Home Product (GDP) knowledge are from the IMF World Financial Outlook Database (see right here). Totals are in present US {dollars} for 2021 (the place 2021 knowledge weren’t accessible, 2020 knowledge had been used). |
Appendix