Refugees can’t get COVID vaccine shots because the manufacturers are afraid they will get sued.
Tens of millions of migrants may be denied COVID-19 vaccines from a global program because some major manufacturers are worried about legal risks from harmful side effects, according to officials and internal documents from Gavi, the charity operating the program, reviewed by Reuters.
File this under you can’t make this stuff up.
Nearly two years into a pandemic that has already killed more than 5 million people, only about 7% of people in low-income countries have received a dose.
The legal concerns are an additional hurdle for public health officials tackling the coronavirus. Many COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers have required that countries indemnify them for any adverse events suffered by individuals as a result of the vaccines, the United Nations says, according to Yahoo.
Migrants don’t have a government to protect them.
The concerns affect people, such as those displaced by the Myanmar, Afghanistan, and Ethiopian crises, who are beyond the reach of national governments’ vaccination schemes.
For refugees, migrants, and asylum-seekers, as well as people afflicted by natural disasters or other events that put them out of reach of government help, the global program is known as COVAX created a Humanitarian Buffer – a last-resort reserve of shots to be administered by humanitarian groups. Gavi, the vaccine alliance, is a public-private partnership set up in 2000 to promote vaccination around the world.
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