LONDON - As the news of breakthroughs in the hunt for a Covid-19 vaccine began to emerge from laboratories last year, some countries went on a shopping spree.
Nations jostled to get their orders in, buying up supplies ready to roll out as soon as vaccines were approved by regulators.
So far, 319.56 million vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, almost three times as many as the total number of infections recorded globally, and an unprecedented achievement considering the virus only first emerged around 15 months ago.
Yet, two statistics highlight the enormous inequality in the way the global rollout has taken place.
One: Three-quarters of all vaccines have gone to people in just 9 countries
Two: More than 100 countries are yet to administer a single vaccine
The result? While experts agree that the pandemic can only be controlled when the whole world is safe, the vast majority of life-saving jabs are being handed out in a handful of mostly wealthy nations.
Yahoo News UK has taken a look at the numbers behind the race to a protect a population.
ooking at vaccine levels as a proportion of countries' populations paints a similar picture, with a small number of nations storming ahead while the vast majority are left trailing.
Globally, an average of 4.1 doses per 100 people have been administered.
In Israel, the nation that has carried out the most vaccines as a proportion of its population, this figure is 103.7. In the UK, 35.02 doses have been administered per 100 people.
Out of the ten countries that have carried out the most vaccines per 100 people, eight are classified as 'high income' by the World Bank. Serbia and the Maldives are the only two nations not on that list.
Britain, with its newly put together vaccine taskforce, shot to the front of the queue to roll out the Covid vaccine.
On 8 December 2020, grandmother Margaret Keenan became the first person in the world to receive the Pfizer Biontech vaccine, receiving a dose from nurse May Parsons at Coventry hospital.
Since then, some 23,773,959 doses have been administered in the UK.
While there is no doubt this figure represents a remarkable effort in the fight against Covid-19, leaving poor countries behind while rich ones gobble up supplies poses huge risks for the global pandemic effort.
As the UK's own vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi put it in February: "No one is really safe until the whole world is safe."
In a bid to encourage fair distribution of jabs, the World Health Organization (WHO) has urged countries that have vaccinated their health workers and elderly populations to give their vaccine stocks to poorer nations.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO, said in February: “All governments have an obligation to protect their own people but once countries have vaccinated their own health workers and older people the best way to protect the rest of their own population is to share vaccines so other countries can do the same."
So far there has been little appetite to adopt this approach.
According to analysis by Duke's University, rich countries have bought up more than half of vaccines purchased and "don’t want to share until they’ve had their fill".
However, that is not to say no commitments have been made to improve vaccine equity.
The WHO-backed COVAX scheme, set up to distribute vaccines to nations that need them, plans to deliver 237 million doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine to 142 countries over the next three months.
