The U.S. and other Western countries could vaccinate teenagers and provide booster shots to everyone, and still have 1.2 billion excess doses available to send elsewhere this year, according to a report from analytics firm Airfinity.
Meanwhile, the global COVAX consortium now anticipates receiving 25% fewer doses than expected due to production problems with the vaccines made by Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Novavax, as well as export restrictions from a major supplier in India.
The vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech have proven to be both life-saving and reliably produced, but the companies have chosen to sell mostly to high-income countries where they make the most money.
Moderna expects to make up to 1 billion doses by the end of 2021, but hardly any of the doses are going to places in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
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