Opinion : COVID-19 Vaccine Can Protect The World's Poorest
* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation. Rich nations will snap up the initial COVID-19 vaccines. We should look to India’s generic vaccine as a model to help the poorest Moderna’s announcement this week that they are close to developing a COVID-19 vaccine that can be stored at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius (rather than Pfizer’s which must be kept at -70 degrees) was particularly significant in the developing world. The cold-chain shipping required for Pfizer’s vaccine was always going to be prohibitively expensive for the world’s poorer countries. Although the Moderna vaccine is more promising for a truly global rollout, it is only through India’s generic pharmaceutical sector that the most needy across the world can quickly receive a vaccine, bypassing the barriers (of limited supplies and high costs) created by the branded equivalents. Aside from the problem of deliverabi