the global project to share covid19 vaccines is struggling to place more than 300 million doses in the latest sign the problem with vaccinating the world is now more about demand than supplylast year wealthy nations snapped most of the available shots to inoculate their own citizens first meaning less than a third of people in lowincome countries have been vaccinated so far compared with more than 70 in richer nationsas supply and donations have ramped up however poorer nations are facing hurdles such as gaps in coldchain shortage vaccine hesitancy and a lack of money to support distribution networks public health officials told reutersin january covax the global vaccine programme run by gavi and the world health organization who had 436 million vaccines to allocate to countries according to a document published in midfebruarybut lowincome nations only asked for 100 million doses for distribution by the end of may the first time in 14 allocation rounds that supply has outstripped demand the document from the covax independent allocation of vaccines group saidasked to comment a gavi spokesperson said covax was now in a situation where there was enough current supply to meet demand but acknowledged that the rollout of vaccines was an issue in several less developed nationswe will only close the vaccine equity gap once and for all if we are able to help countries roll out vaccines rapidly and at scale the spokesperson saidvaccines that are not assigned by covax in this round can be allocated again laterwhile wealthy countries are opening up their economies the who and other public health experts warn that the slow rollout of vaccines in poorer regions will give the coronavirus a chance to mutate again and potentially create new variantsfridges and freezers the low demand for vaccines in the january allocation is partly explained by recent increases in supplies covax has already assigned tens of millions of doses to be delivered in the first quarter and delivered its billionth dose in januaryofficials involved in vaccine distribution said that meant countries were reluctant to take on more doses that they would not be able to usea summit to address distribution challenges is taking place on wednesday in abuja nigeria convened by the african unions africa vaccine delivery alliance with who gavi and others rolling out shots across africa attendingthere had been hopes that african countries would be able to administer billions of doses of covid19 vaccines given their experience in dealing with deadly diseases from ebola to malariabut two years into the crisis a survey seen by reuters by the united nations childrens fund unicef in january on the equipment needed to ramp up vaccine distribution highlighted some of the challengesit found critical gaps across 44 of the african unions 55 member states 24 countries said they needed fridges 18 were in need of deep freezers 22 required walkin freezers and 16 did not have sufficient walkin cold roomsa unicef spokesperson said more than 800 ultracold chain freezers had already been