Covid 19: We need a global vaccination plan

The pledge to donate one billion doses of Covid vaccines for the world’s poor made by the Cornish summit of the Group of Seven (“G7”) wealthy democracies has been criticised as “too little, too late” by health professionals. While a portion of the donated doses will be delivered this year through the COVAX mechanism founded by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Gavi, the vaccination alliance, the rest — perhaps even the main portion — will not be available until next year. By that time Covid will mutate repeatedly, creating new forms which could resist existing vaccines.

Out of eight billion people in the world only 2.3 billion have been vaccinated.

Commenting on the G7 plan, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said, “For the first time in 75 years, the entire world faces the same enemy: Covid 19...We need a global vaccination plan.

We need to act with logic, with a sense of urgency, and with the priorities of a war economy, and we are still far from getting that.”

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the G7 pledges amounted to “passing round the begging bowl” rather than a real effort to tackle Covid. “It’s a catastrophic failure if we can’t go away in the next week or two… with a plan that actually rids the world of COVID now we’ve got a vaccine,” he told Reuters news agency.

Clearly, leaders of the G7 are still not taking seriously the threat of Covid either at home or abroad. Full vaccinations in these countries range, surprisingly, from 64 per cent in Canada, to 51 per cent in the US, 47 per cent in Italy, 43 per cent in Britain, 24 per cent in Germany, 20.5 per cent in France, and an inexplicable 4.3 per cent in Japan. Even India, where the battle against the pandemic is faltering, beats Japan with 14 per cent of its vast population.

Known for the discipline of its population and competence in governance, Japan’s performance is one of the worst in the world, imperilling the Tokyo Olympics which are set to take place next month. The Japanese public, fearful that the games could become a super-spreader of infection, is demanding cancellation.

The UAE tops the global vaccination table with 70 per cent, followed in this region, with Israel at 63 per cent and Bahrain at 59 per cent. The UAE succeeded by recognising the danger posed by Covid early and getting on with the job of finding and using vaccines as they were produced.

Israel made a cosy deal with Pfizer by paying more than the going price and providing data on the vaccination programme. Bahrain has a small population.

The slogan world leaders must adopt is, “No one is safe until everyone is safe,” and get on with the job of ensuring enough vaccines are being manufactured, distributed, and delivered into people’s arms. Until vaccine protection to extended to all, travel and domestic restrictions must remain.

Dr. Leontios Kastrikkis — a Cypriot epidemiologist who conducted a survey covering the period April 2020 to January 2021 — found that that Covid infection epidemic was maintained on the island by a continuous influx of lineages (variants) from many countries, producing an enduring and evolving virus on Cyprus. The only way to ensure this does not happen is to seal off Cyprus and other countries where the cases of virus appear, rise in number and fall until another takes over.

Located on two much larger islands, the UK is a prime example of this process. The government is currently reconsidering its plan to lift restrictions this month because the dominant Covid strain in the UK is the Indian variant — which arrived with travellers from India — which has overtaken the local Kent variant. Experts warn there could be a higher risk of serious illness and hospitalisation from the Indian variant.

Dr Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, said, “The way to tackle variants is to tackle the transmission of COVID-19 as a whole.” This means maintaining lockdown, social distancing, masking and vaccinating. Unless transmission is tackled by eliminating the danger of contagion this cycle of controls and disruptions will continue indefinitely.”

The pernicious threat of Covid is best described by a contemporary adaptation of the most famous poem by the 16th-17th century English poet, John Donne: “No country is an island entire of itself; every land is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...” He continued by saying the death of “any man diminishes” mankind as a whole. If the world’s rich nations took his words to heart, the fight against Covid would not be defined by donations of doses and dollars.

Thailand became one of the Southeast Asia Covid success stories by keeping tight controls in place until middle and upper middle class socialites decided to party in Bangkok night clubs.

This produced a steep third wave of Covid infections. Everyone is threatened by Covid if one sector in society does not exercise vigilance.

Unfortunately, Thailand did not launch its mass vaccination campaign until last Monday with the aim of administering six million doses of domestically-made Astra-Zeneca and imported Chinese Sinovac. It is difficult to understand why the government did not act much, much earlier, particularly since it seeks to open its resorts to foreign tourists. The authorities intend to vaccinate 70 per cent of the population of more than 66 million by the end of the year. So far, only 2.8 million of the most vulnerable, including health workers, have received a first dose.

“Big Parma” is, apparently, taking Covid more seriously than global governments. At the Group of 20 (G-20) health summit last month, Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson said they would supply 3.5 billion doses at cost or discount to low and middle income countries during this year and next. Pfizer will deliver one billion dozes this year and another billion in 2022.

Moderna pledged up to 95 million doses for 2021 and 900 million in 2022, a portion to be channelled through the Covax programme. Johnson & Johnson has a deal with Covax to provide 200 million doses this year and, potentially, supplying an additional 300 million, for a total of 500 million.

Perhaps, the G7 and other countries which have done well in the vaccination stakes could finance these lower cost doses as well as increasing their own vaccine contributions to Covax.