LATE last year, the impending roll-out of vaccines to immunise populations against Covid-19 inspired optimism, and with good reason. Vaccines would mitigate the pandemic's worst health impacts and free up healthcare facilities to enable care for the most severe cases. They would bring a measure of herd immunity, enable economies to begin to normalise and get growth back on an even keel.

Now vaccinations are under way in varying degrees across the world. But as more infectious and potentially more virulent strains of the virus have emerged, poorer economies are reeling from second and third waves, crippled by already weakened healthcare systems and an acute shortage of vaccines.

It turns out that even Covax, hailed as a global solution and the world's best hope for rapid and equitable access to vaccines, is falling short, due to circumstances beyond its control. Covax is co-led by three bodies including the World Health Organization, with Unicef as the key delivery partner. It hoped to have 2 billion doses by end-2021, but supply is currently hamstrung by India which itself is grappling with the pandemic on a devastating scale. The Serum Institute of India was to supply one billion doses. But as exports have been suspended for now due to the scale of India's infections, there have been no shipments since March. As at early May, Covax has distributed about 70 million doses to 125 countries. This is less than one per cent of the countries' combined populations.