Bini Dahal

While curves of COVID-19 infections and deaths have kept on picking up in many developing nations, nine owners of companies manufacturing vaccines against this pandemic have entered the Forbes List of billionaires. This is certainly a big irony.
Reports have stated that the recent surge in the production and use of vaccines has made owners of the companies producing such jabs have got richer overnight. Some of the new billionaires include Stephane Bancel and Ugur Sahin, who are the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of Moderna (MDX) and BioNTech (BNTX), respectively. Likewise, with share prices skyrocketing due to profit expectation from the vaccine, senior executives from China's CanSino Biologics and early investors of Moderna have also been on the Forbes List of billionaires.
While Moderna's share price has gained by more than 700 per cent since February 2020, BioNTech’s share has surged by 600 per cent. Over the same time period, the stock of CanSino Biologics is also up by about 440 per cent. Now this increase in wealth indicates a huge inequality in terms of vaccine availability in many developing nations around the world. The People’s Vaccine Alliance has blamed monopoly of vaccine manufacturing companies for triggering more problems.
These nine billionaires have a combined asset of US$19.3 billion which is more than enough to vaccinate some 78 million people in low-income countries. Not to forget vaccinating these nations is not very expensive. In her report, chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IFM) Gita Gopinath has stated that vaccinating 60 per cent of the global population by mid-2001 will cost only around US$ 50 billion.
The G20 Health Summit, scheduled to be held on Friday (May 28), plans to discuss waiving off intellectual property rights concerning the development vaccines. If done, many countries will be working on producing vaccines on their own. This is expected to address a vaccine shortage, to a great extent, and also lead to a considerable fall in the number of infections. With the expansion of global vaccine supply, the vaccination gap between the rich and poor countries will be narrowed down significantly.
But, what countries will have to remember is that the vaccine making process is not as easy as it is thought to be. Limited production capacity and insufficient vaccine components are the main obstacles to producing vaccines even if patents are provided.
The vaccine funding has been mostly made by developed nations for the vaccine manufacturing companies. Since public money is involved in this process, there are debates that these vaccines should be utilised for global public welfare rather than for private profit-making.
Developing nations like Nepal are now in dire need of a large number of vaccines. And the country does not have the capacity to produce vaccines on its own. Thus, our dependency on the international community and immediate neighbours like India and China for this has remained high. But over the past some months, India’s situation has worsened after the outbreak of the devastating second wave of the pandemic.
Its own citizens are deprived of vaccines and dying in large numbers. The situation of Nepal is also almost similar. Therefore, if the profit focus continues, this pandemic will create worse situations than ever. The international community should start working on reducing the gap between the developed and the least-developed counties when it comes to sharing vaccines.