Vaccine Nationalism Harms Everyone and Protects No One
| FEBRUARY 2, 2021, 1:51 PM
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
speaks at a press conference after a meeting about the COVID-19 outbreak at the
World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva on June 25, 2020. FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
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We are in a
race against time. The development of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines in
record time is a remarkable testament to modern scientific capabilities.
Whether it will bring an end to this terrible pandemic is a test of the world’s
political will and moral commitment.
Despite the
growing number of vaccine options, current manufacturing capacity meets only a
fraction of global need. Vaccines are the best chance of bringing this pandemic
under control—unless leaders succumb to vaccine nationalism.
.
International
collaboration among scientists was critical to vaccine development, but now
weak cooperation between nations is a major barrier to achieving worldwide
vaccination at the scale needed to end the pandemic. Vaccine equity isn’t just
a slogan; it protects people everywhere, protects the existing shots from new
vaccine-resistant variants, and strengthens the international community’s
ability to stop COVID-19.
At present,
rich countries with just 16 percent of the world’s population have bought up 60
percent of the world’s vaccine supply. Many of these countries aim to vaccinate
70 percent of their adult population by midyear in pursuit of herd immunity.
But COVAX—the multilateral mechanism created by the World Health Organization
together with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi, the
vaccine alliance, to ensure that vaccines reach all people everywhere—is
struggling to purchase enough doses to cover just 20 percent of the population
of lower-income countries by the end of 2021.
Vaccine
allocation must not become a zero-sum game. Vaccine nationalism is
not just morally indefensible. It is epidemiologically self-defeating and
clinically counterproductive.
Vaccine
nationalism is not just morally indefensible. It is epidemiologically
self-defeating and clinically counterproductive.
Market-driven
mechanisms alone are insufficient to achieve the goal of stopping the pandemic
by achieving herd immunity with vaccines. Limited supplies and overwhelming
demand create winners and losers. Neither is morally or medically acceptable
during a pandemic.
Allowing the
majority of the world’s population to go unvaccinated will not only perpetuate
needless illness and deaths and the pain of ongoing lockdowns, but also spawn
new virus mutations as COVID-19 continues to spread among unprotected
populations. Unchecked spread can result in the emergence of more contagious
variants, leading to a steep rise in cases. It is a vicious cycle. Faster
spread means more people are being infected and more people are dying as health
care systems become overwhelmed.
A hermetic
seal between the world’s haves and have nots is neither desirable nor possible.
This coronavirus spreads quickly and often silently, before symptoms develop,
or with mild ones common to multiple diseases. These clinical characteristics
combined with uncontrolled spread and the global flow of people means that
there is a risk that new variants will continue to emerge and spread between
countries.
Most
troublingly, new mutations could lead to vaccine resistance. There is already
evidence that some vaccines are less effective against the variants first
identified in Brazil and South Africa. Vaccines were based on version 1.0 of
the virus—but new viruses, like software, are constantly evolving. The new
variants may infect people who have already survived an earlier version of the
virus. It is also possible that the virus could become more deadly. A small
increase in lethality would have a catastrophic effect.
Growing
vaccine nationalism is also socially and economically counterproductive.
Unprotected populations and communities everywhere will continue to suffer the
enormous secondary effects of the pandemic. Continued lockdowns mean economic
devastation, with more people plunged into poverty and more lives cut short. A
study by the International Chamber of Commerce shows that fully vaccinating the
population of rich countries while neglecting poor ones could cost rich
countries as much as $4.5 trillion in lost economic activity.
Children are
suffering the worst collateral damage. Lost schooling means more child brides
and child laborers, greater hunger, and increased gender inequality. The effect
of lost education is permanent, leading to shorter, less fulfilling lives.
At the
moment, there are not enough vaccine doses in any country, but the shortfall in
poor countries is particularly dire. As long as world leaders are calculating
whose lives and livelihoods to prioritize, as long as everyone is scrambling to
secure enough doses, we are all losing the fight. The main vaccine producers
are working to increase production, but they are nowhere near meeting demand.
Governments
and companies must come together to overcome this artificial scarcity. There
are many steps that can be taken to ramp up vaccine production and broaden
distribution. These include openly sharing vaccine manufacturing technology,
intellectual property, and know-how through the COVID-19 Technology Access
Pool, temporarily waiving intellectual property barriers, and expanding
voluntary contracting between manufacturers.
Open-sourcing
will enable immediate use of untapped production capacity, through such
initiatives as the Developing Countries Vaccine Manufacturers Network, and help
build additional manufacturing bases—especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin
America—which will be essential to meeting ongoing demand for COVID-19 booster
shots and future vaccines. Expanding production globally would make poor
countries less dependent on donations from rich ones. This is essential to
achieve true health equality and global health security.
FP
INSIDER’S COVID-19 INDEX outlines major bottlenecks affecting
the global vaccine roll-out and profiles actions governments are taking around
the world to manage the ongoing crisis.
The
international community cannot allow a handful of actors to dictate the terms
or the timeframe for ending the pandemic. The coronavirus is not only
indifferent to profits and politics; it is still evolving. The longer we allow
billions of people to go unvaccinated, the greater the possibility that new
variants will develop vaccine resistance. Vaccine nationalism combined with a
restrictive approach to vaccine production is in fact more likely to prolong
the pandemic—which would be tantamount to medical malpractice on a global
scale.
Despite
massive investment, the therapeutic options are limited, and there is no
reliable cure. Since vaccines are critical to preventing death, it is vital to
maintain their effectiveness. So far, vaccination efforts have rightfully prioritized
those at greatest risk of dying: the elderly.
Governments
are also urgently moving to protect health care workers, the first line of
defense, who risk their lives to save others on a daily basis. The WHO
estimates at least 30,000 health care workers have already died from
COVID-19—and it could be more than twice that figure—exacerbating a preexisting
global shortage of medical professionals.
Beyond each
personal tragedy, the multiplier effect of their loss from the work force
permanently diminishes the world’s clinical and surveillance capacity,
increases COVID-19’s death toll, and lessens the chances of detecting the next
pandemic threat before it’s too late. Countries with supplies over and above
what they need to vaccinate their health workers, elderly, and people with
underlying conditions could urgently donate excess doses through COVAX to help
meet this crucial need.
But these
urgent needs are just the beginning. To control the pandemic, the only
permanent solution is to vaccinate as many people all over the world as fast as
possible. That means radically stepping up production. Every week of delay
increases the suffering and the social and economic carnage.
If pandemics
are microbial wars, then vaccines are our preferred weapons of mass salvation.
But they are not a panacea. Stopping this pandemic also requires effective
measures such as improved indoor ventilation in workplaces and schools as well
as tools that engage everyone in active combat against the virus, such as rapid
home tests, masks, and physical distancing.
READ MORE
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The positive contrast
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REPORT |
More
broadly, anyone who needs a vaccination—which is everyone—needs access to a
health care worker who can provide it. Those most likely to die from COVID-19
are those without access to health care. Moreover, it is hard to incentivize
people to get vaccinated in places where governments have not addressed the
quotidian killers alleviated by basic health care. The world won’t achieve
vaccine equity unless governments deliver on long-standing promises to secure
universal health coverage.
COVID-19 is
the world’s wake-up call. Relegating the billions of people in poor countries
to the back of the vaccine queue, forcing them to wait until the entire
populations of rich countries are vaccinated, is morally wrong. Each of us is a
human being who deserves the best available health care—the greatest potential
for a fulfilling and productive life—regardless of the strength of our native
country’s economy.
In a deadly
pandemic, the right to health is the right to life. Every human has the right
to be protected. But we need everyone protected as fast as possible—or else we
all lose.
The pandemic
will not be over anywhere until it is over everywhere. This is the reality of
an interconnected world, and that reality can be met only by a reaffirmation of
solidarity and an inclusive public-health order that distributes vaccines
globally, quickly, and equitably.
To the
virus, we are all one herd. To beat it, we must act as one community.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is director-general of the
World Health Organization Twitter: @DrTedros
TAGS: HEALTH, NATIONALISM, PANDEMICS
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