This article is part of the series The COVID-19 Vaccine Challenge: Contextual and Country Analysis.
COVID-19 vaccines have slowly arrived in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), but vaccination rates remain very low when compared to other regions of the world. The situation is far from ideal, and, thus, governments are obliged to continue searching for solutions to procure vaccines, engage in bilateral and multilateral diplomatic efforts to ensure donations, and distribute and administer vaccines in a fair, equal, and efficient manner.
The suboptimal vaccination progress in LAC is contradictory given that a quarter of the 20 countries in the world with the highest number of cumulative total COVID-19 cases, are in the region. As of 20 July 2021, 3.4 billion doses have been administered around the globe. According to the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), the specialised international health agency of the Inter-American System and regional office of the World Health Organisation (WHO), only 14 percent of the total population in LAC has been fully vaccinated. This means that 9 percent of the estimated 1 billion world population fully vaccinated are from the region with roughly 1 out of 10 people fully vaccinated globally.
Vaccination rates vary from country-to-country. It is worrisome that by the end of July 2021, some countries “have not yet been able to vaccinate more than 1 percent of their population.” The main question is: Why have countries not been able to vaccinate at a faster pace? There are key structural, institutional, and political aspects that provide an explanation.
First, countries have not been able to vaccinate at a faster pace partly because the LAC region already had structural problems, which do not help the preconditions leading up to the health crisis. Unsurprisingly, “countries and regions with the highest incomes are getting vaccinated more than 30 times faster than those with the lowest.” The regional economy did not fully recover after the commodity boom that ended in 2012. Regional annual GDP growth rates started to decline from figures above 5.5 percent to a mediocre combined average annual growth rate of 0.9 percent in the five years (2015-2019) preceding the pandemic.
The Venezuelan refugee crisis, the second biggest refugee crisis in the world after the Syrian, had been creating significant fiscal stress for LAC governments, which had to redirect scarce state resources to deal with the humanitarian situation.
Additionally, LAC has been persistently the most unequal region in the world in which most of the population is marginalised without access to public goods and services such as high quality health and education. These structural challenges helped trigger a new wave of social protests before the pandemic. Moreover, the Venezuelan refugee crisis, the second biggest refugee crisis in the world after the Syrian, had been creating significant fiscal stress for LAC governments, which had to redirect scarce state resources to deal with the humanitarian situation. No doubt, pressures on governments of all types—democracies and dictatorships—to procure, deliver, and administer have greatly intensified during the pandemic. Even Cuba, where freedom of expression does not exist, is facing unprecedented social unrest.
Caribbean states face longstanding challenges that made resilience during the pandemic an uphill battle. Most of these nations are almost entirely dependent on tourism, which vanished overnight with COVID-19. For decades, these countries have been forced to become highly in debt due to reconstruction costs after natural disasters. Added to it is the misleading classification of “middle income countries”, which prevents them to easily access loans from international financial institutions, Caribbean states are not in a position of strong purchasing power to procure vaccines. Just as Latin American states, Caribbean states require the support of international actors and agencies.
Secondly, weakness of democratic institutions and lack of good governance also partly explain why countries have not been able to vaccinate at a faster pace. Corruption is a major endemic problem in LAC. In the last decade, at least a dozen former presidents have been charged with corruption, and the region is home to some of the most corrupt countries in the world. As corruption is widespread, transparent procurement, efficient distribution, and equal access to vaccines are impossible tasks.
During the pandemic, there have been cases of high level politicians getting ahead of the “vaccine line”, “vacunagate” scandals have occurred, and there have been observed instances of actors close to power making a profit with vaccine procurement and distribution. The pace of vaccination in LAC cannot be improved if corruption undermines state actions in responding to the emergency. As Transparency International argues, “Corruption and emergencies feed off each other, creating a vicious cycle of mismanagement and deeper crisis.”
The pace of vaccination in LAC cannot be improved if corruption undermines state actions in responding to the emergency.
Finally, politics can be blamed for the low vaccination rates. There are common, wrong assumptions when discussing COVID-19: The pandemic accepted as a scientific fact, vaccination as necessary, and reporting of pandemic-related indicators as trustworthy. Evidently, these assumptions are not always true. Not all leaders embrace facts automatically. Some statesmen refused to wear a mask when the pandemic began, and still do not wear a mask today. Some have even denied the existence of the pandemic. There are major discrepancies in the way the pandemic has been understood by leaders, let alone by the way they have responded to it. If leaders do not believe that vaccination is an efficient and scientific solution, there is little hope of hurrying up its pace. The pandemic has created political opportunism and polarisation. Goals are biased towards political self-interest, not necessarily towards the greater common good. For political and electoral reasons, there is a tendency to underreport coronavirus cases and over report vaccination rates. Leaders, not just social media empowered citizens, can produce fake news.
In conclusion, the vaccination process in LAC has been slow, but surely to a limited extent. Access to vaccines within the region remains highly uneven. Many still are below the global average vaccination rate and some have only vaccinated 1 percent of the population. With the emergence of the highly transmissible Delta variant, the crisis is far from over and there are many challenges ahead. Given the structural, institutional, and political aspects that thwart the path forward, stronger multilateral leadership and a commitment to integrity, efficiency, and fairness is indispensable. PAHO, the COVAX mechanism, and the United States must continue expanding donations and access to safe vaccines for the region. At the same time, LAC governments and leaders must do its share of good governance work in making immunity for the Americas a reality by the end of 2021.
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
PREV
