NAIROBI, Kenya -- Several hundred people line up every morning, starting before dawn, on a grassy area outside Nairobi's largest hospital hoping to get the covid-19 vaccine. Sometimes the line moves smoothly, while on other days, the staff tells them there's nothing available and that they should return the next day.
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Halfway around the world, at a church in Atlanta, two workers with plenty of vaccine doses waited hours Wednesday for anyone to show up, whiling away the time by listening to music. Over a six-hour period, only one person came through the door.
The contrast highlights the vast disparity around the world. In richer countries, people can often pick and choose from multiple available vaccines, walk into sites near their homes and get their shots in minutes. Pop-up clinics, such as the one in Atlanta, take vaccine doses into rural areas and urban neighborhoods, but it is common for them to get very few takers.
In the developing world, supply is limited and uncertain. Just over 3% of people across Africa have been fully vaccinated, and health officials and citizens often have little idea what will be available from one day to the next. More vaccines have been flowing in recent weeks, but the World Health Organization's director in Africa said Thursday that the continent will get 25% fewer doses than anticipated by the end of the year, in part because of the rollout of booster shots in wealthier counties such as the U.S.
Bidian Okoth recalled spending more than three hours in line at a Nairobi hospital, only to be told to go home because there weren't enough doses. But a friend who traveled to the U.S. got a shot almost immediately after his arrival there with a vaccine of his choice, "like candy," he said.
"We're struggling with what time in the morning we need to wake up to get the first shot. Then you hear people choosing their vaccines. That's super, super excessive," he said.
Okoth said his uncle died from covid-19 in June and had given up twice on getting vaccinated due to the length of the lines, even though he was eligible due to his age. The death jolted Okoth, a health advocate, into seeking a dose for himself.
He stopped at one hospital so often on his way to work that a doctor "got tired of seeing me" and told Okoth he would call him when doses were available. Late last month, after a new donation of vaccines arrived from Britain, he got his shot.
The disparity comes as the U.S. is moving closer to offering booster shots to large segments of the population even as it struggles to persuade Americans to get vaccinated in the first place.
About 53% of the U.S. population is vaccinated, and the country is averaging more than 150,000 new cases of covid-19 a day, along with 1,500 deaths. Africa has had more than 7.9 million confirmed cases, including more than 200,000 deaths.
The head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, insisted Wednesday that rich countries with large supplies of coronavirus vaccines should hold off on offering booster shots through the end of the year and make the doses available to poorer countries.