Global imbalance in vaccinations threatens fight against COVID-19 pandemic

As the Biden administration orchestrates a massive effort to open vaccination against COVID to every adult by April 19, a “shocking imbalance” in vaccination is occurring globally.

While governments of many wealthier capitalist countries are vaccinating their populations, vaccinations have all but stalled in the global South countries, leaving the people in large swaths of the planet to fend for themselves.

“Vaccine nationalism” by wealthier capitalist countries, pharmaceutical industry greed, misinformation, and the lack of funding and public health infrastructure in many places are all immense obstacles to global vaccination just as the pandemic spikes.

The U.S., among 100 nations vaccinating their populations, is vaccinating approximately 4 million people a day. This past weekend the number was a record 4.5 million. By February, ten countries had administered 75% of all vaccine doses. However, about 30 countries, including much of Africa, have yet to administer their first dose.

At the current vaccination rate, the world will reach herd immunity (when 75-80% of the population has received the two-dose vaccine) in 4.6 years, and 80% of the people in low-income countries will not receive a vaccine this year.

Pharmaceutical corporations hope to produce between 10-14 billion vaccine doses in 2021. Already wealthier capitalist countries have “cleared the shelves,” claiming two-thirds of them, enough to vaccinate their populations 2 or 3 times over.

So far, these countries are prioritizing vaccinating their populations. “Vaccine hoarding” sends the message that everyone else is on their own. Just as the pandemic exposed vast health care inequalities in the U.S., this approach reinforces immense global public health structural inequalities, including during the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Unequal vaccination has global economic and social consequences, including on the people of the U.S. as well. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned without global vaccination, no country, including the U.S., is assured of ending the pandemic and achieving economic recovery. And over 250 million people risk falling into extreme poverty if the global economy doesn’t recover.

In February, Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to President Biden also warned the world faces a permanent pandemic crisis unless vaccination is increased and equally applied everywhere. Even if the U.S. population is primarily vaccinated (the main exception being half of GOP voters who refuse), there is a significant risk of reinfection (variants are a reason for the recent surge in Covid-19 infections) from variant strains of Covid-19 from other countries. Reinfection could result in new surges and deaths, shutdowns, and economic disruptions.

“Bottom line: We have to get the entire world vaccinated, not just our own country,” Dr. Fauci stressed. Success also depends on the development of cheaper and easily deliverable vaccines, he said.

Massive inequalities persist despite creating the COVAX facility, a multilateral initiative associated with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI). The goal of COVAX is to bring vaccines to 92 more impoverished and developing countries by gathering “governments, global health organizations, manufacturers, scientists, private sector, civil society, and philanthropy, with the aim of providing innovative and equitable access to COVID-19 diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines.”

Lack of resources has hampered COVAX from the start. India’s decision to redirect vaccines it promised to COVAX for domestic use in light of a surge of cases has exacerbated the vaccine shortage. India has the largest pharmaceutical production capacity in the world.

Under the most optimistic forecasts, COVAX is aiming for a 20% vaccination rate by the end of 2021. “The approach is not for universal coverage,” Economics Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University told a UNESCO Covid Roundtable. “We do not have the funding for scaling up.”

The funding must come primarily from the wealthier capitalist countries. Sachs said the cost of universal vaccination coverage is only $50 billion by the end of 2022. “Our governments obviously have the funding but are not giving the funding,” he said, noting the $5 trillion the U.S. has committed to the pandemic, bolstering the public health infrastructure and economic rescue so far.

The Biden Administration reversed Trump’s policy to withdraw from COVAX. It announced the U.S. would contribute $4 billion to the effort, provide more aid through additional Special Drawing Rights in the IMF, and made other commitments during the Quad Summit with India, Japan, and Australia. The U.S. will support the work of the WHO and COVAX, help expand manufacturing capacity in India to produce 1 billion doses, and contribute an additional $100 million for immunization efforts in the Indo-Pacific region.

The administration is taking these halting steps in considerable measure as part of its strategic competition with China to counter China’s distribution of tens of millions of vaccines to poor and developing countries, enhancing its growing role and prestige. Once the U.S. inoculates its population, the Biden administration will send excess vaccines globally.

The socialist-oriented states of China, Cuba, and Vietnam are stepping into this “vaccine chasm” with solidarity, motivated by policies that see the Covid-19 vaccine as a public good. Western corporate media largely ignores or distorts their successful efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, where governments prioritize public health.

(IPA Service)

Views are personal

Courtesy: People’s World