When...vaccine?

While the vaccination situation feels very slow right now, the situation will look shockingly better by the end of 2021. Governments and civil society need to prepare for success.

Source: Our World in Data

When will a majority of people be vaccinated in Brazil/Mexico/Peru?

When will vaccines arrive in Honduras/Nicaragua/Colombia?

Why is my government falling behind on vaccinating?

I’ve received variations on those questions in recent weeks. There is a lot of anxiety across the world right regarding the apparently slow progress of vaccinations. 

Only one country in Latin America (Brazil) has vaccinated 1% of its population so far (Costa Rica may be close as well) and no country is on track to hit 10% this month. Most countries have yet to receive a vaccine shipment or have only received one relatively small shipment.

A Wall Street Journal article reports that countries are falling behind in vaccine distribution. I love the data in the article but hate the impending sense of doom just weeks into the vaccine effort. Various consulting firms are estimating that many countries in Latin America won’t be vaccinated until mid to late-2022 or even 2023.

The next few months will look bleak with lots of setbacks and delays. And because we live in an era of expecting instant results, that will lead to plenty of despair and recriminations. In part because we’re all stuck at home while new variants spread and hospitals are quite full in most large cities, every day of this pandemic feels like Groundhog Day where the vaccination effort is moving far too slowly. 

Let me inject a rare bit of optimism into this debate. In spite of whatever bad stories you’ve read, no country in Latin America is irrevocably behind. Very little will be accomplished in a single media cycle, but a lot will be accomplished in the next year. While countries across the world have had setbacks in vaccination campaigns, we’re also less than 10% of the way through 2021. Contrary to conventional wisdom, nearly every country in this hemisphere will have the opportunity to have half its population vaccinated by the first quarter of 2022. Whether they will be prepared to take that opportunity is the big question.

The initial media focus in each country will be when its first shipments arrive or its first small percentage of the country is vaccinated. There is a good reason for this. To the extent possible, most countries will prioritize elderly and vulnerable populations because getting the most vulnerable 20% vaccinated will have the biggest impact in terms of reducing mortality and hospitalizations. Unfortunately, that initial 10-20% of the vaccination process is going to feel quite slow across Latin America because it is all happening while governments are competing for limited supplies. The media coverage on that painfully slow process is likely to cause public anger. 

Some time during the third quarter of this year, the situation will quickly change from a question of supply constraints to a question of political will and organization. Vaccines that remain very scarce today will become widely available as production ramps up and wealthier countries hit a tipping point where their supply outstrips their demand. New vaccines that are cheaper and easier to transport/store will be approved for distribution. Countries that are able to do the hard work organizing a vaccine distribution plan during the first half of this year should see benefits before October. 

Donations are coming. The United States, Canada, the European Union and China are all going to be very inwardly focused on their own vaccination challenges over the coming few months. Once the flywheel is turning and a significant portion of all those populations are vaccinated, the wealthier countries will hit a moment where large donations will be more politically feasible. There is no reason other than a failure of political will that tens of millions of vaccines are not donated and distributed to the poorer countries in the hemisphere. Donations won’t happen without hard work and coordination (logistics matter and donor countries should be working on them now), but there is a real potential that small, poor countries can be swiftly and efficiently vaccinated thanks to donations and focus by late 2021.

Success will come from countries that plan but also countries that coordinate with civil society, share data openly and transparently, and show some flexibility in their planning. A secret, centralized, and rigid planning process is far more likely to have things go wrong (and also far more likely to have corruption). If I have any concern in my optimistic prediction about vaccine distribution, it’s that many of the region’s politicians are feeling the weight of coronavirus failure thus far and because of that they will try to make sure they get to take credit for success moving forward. In trying to centralize the process around themselves, they are doing more harm than good both in terms of the pandemic and their own political fortunes. 

Latin American governments and civil society should take this moment of limited vaccine supplies to plan, organize, coordinate and set expectations. While the US and Europe were caught off guard by distribution challenges, Latin America should learn from those mistakes and prepare to avoid those same mistakes when vaccine supplies are available later this year. They should be preparing for a moment in the near future where they are vaccinating 10-20% of the population per month.

So “When...vaccine?” The answer is this year, at first slowly and then at a speed that may catch a lot of people and governments off guard. Be ready for it.

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