The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 33, November 2021 Page 5 From the series The struggle against coronavirus Around 227 million people have been infected by the novel coronavirus SARSCoV-2 worldwide, causing 4.7 million deaths [Johns Hopkins University, September 17 th , 2021]. If tracked over time, both figures can be seen as indicators of the pandemic’s evolution . However, they do not give the full picture of the humanitarian disaster — not only because the coldness of the statistics hardly expresses the violence with which this health crisis has disrupted the lives of millions, but also because the official figures are believed to greatly underestimate the real situation. Missed diagnoses The number of Covid-19 cases indentified and registered in the statistics depends in fact on the number of diagnostic tests performed. It also varies greatly from country to country and in the different phases of the pandemic curve, as well as being...

From the series The struggle against coronavirus According to the British analyst firm Airfinity, some 9.5 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines will be produced worldwide in 2021. This number is double the annual production of all types of vaccines in the pre-pandemic era (5 billion, excluding oral polio, travellers’ and military vaccines), and can be compared with the requirement of 11.5 billion to immunise two-thirds of the world’s population [Airfinity, March 8th]. The development of vaccines has been exceptionally rapid, but manufacturing them on a large scale has encountered difficulties and delays. In 2020, only 4% of the expected doses were in fact produced [ibidem]. Production is concentrated in a limited number of countries, largely interdependent due to supply chains that cross state borders and continents. The World Bank identifies, among the producing countries, a Covid-19 vaccine producers club of 13 countries that manufacture both the active ingredient and its component...