As the United States flounders to meet its COVID-19 vaccine targets—only 49% of Americans are fully vaccinated to date.

The especially contagious Delta variant has the daily number of new cases back on the upswing, with a 171% increase in new cases compared to two weeks ago.

Around the world, the situation is even more dire.

Despite the fact that experts predict nearly 11 billion doses of vaccine will have been manufactured by the end of 2021, vaccines are not accessible by the vast majority of people who live outside the world’s highest-income countries.

On Wednesday, Boston University’s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy & Research (CEID) convened a panel of experts to provide a briefing on the pitfalls that have so far prevented COVID-19 vaccines from reaching the world’s most vulnerable populations, and what challenges lie ahead in pursuit of the goal for 40% of the world population to receive a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of 2021.

That goal, and a longer-range one of having 60% of the world vaccinated by mid-2022, was proposed earlier this year at the G20 Global Health Summit by Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In the briefing, global health experts Nahid Bhadelia, founding director of the CEID, Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Mosoka Fallah, president and CEO of Refuge Place International, discussed ways that US policymakers can help ensure people around the world have equitable access to coronavirus vaccine—a strategy that will also protect the health of Americans.

With Delta driving coronavirus cases toward another US-wide spike, and many Americans still hesitating to get vaccinated, Maxmen says, “it’s like watching a slow-moving train wreck, despite having developed the scientific tools to stop it.”

Read the full article about slow vaccine distributions by Kat McAlpine at Futurity.