Uttam Maharjan

The COVID-19 pandemic is now spreading like wildfire across the world due especially to the emergence of the second wave of the pandemic. In some European countries, even the third wave has been reported. In order to fight the contagion, various vaccines have been developed and there is a global vaccination campaign going on right now.
It is reported that there is growing inequity in the inoculation of people on the basis of where they live: high-income or middle- or low-income countries. One in four people from high-income countries is reported to have got the COVID-19 jab as against one in over 500 people in poorer countries. This speaks volumes for the vastly unfair and unequal distribution of COVID-19 vaccines among various countries in the world.

Supply of Vaccines
Vaccine nationalism emerged long before vaccines were rolled out when rich countries tried to be the first to inoculate their populations rather preemptively ahead of other countries. In the process, they signed agreements with COVID-19 vaccine-producing pharmaceutical companies for the supply of vaccines for their populations even before the vaccines had undergone clinical trials. At the time, they did not know which vaccines would be more promising. That is why they ended up booking vaccines from multiple companies. The USA, the UK, Japan and European-bloc countries have secured millions of vaccines. Some countries have procured vaccines more than their populations need.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is fretting at this tendency of a handful of rich countries to procure vaccines for their populations at the cost of poorer countries. This may also hamper the COVAX programme, which aims at ensuring the fair distribution of vaccines to 92 poorer countries around the world. However, over 170 countries, the UK and China included, have supported the COVAX programme. The WHO wants countries having excess vaccines to share them with other countries. The thing is unless everybody is inoculated against COVID-19, nobody will be safe. So when poorer countries are left behind in the inoculation drive, the disease cannot be defeated.
Now the mutant variants of the coronavirus have also appeared. The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is ascribed to these variants. The UK variant is playing havoc with India and the effects of the variant have also been seen in Nepalis returning from India. As such, Nepal is also in the grip of the second wave of the pandemic now.
Vaccine nationalism is a myopic concept. Rather than curbing the COVID-19 pandemic, it could stoke the risks of the pandemic spreading even more quickly. In this global age, controlling the pandemic in certain parts of the world is not enough. There is a high chance of the pandemic affecting the unvaccinated populations in other parts of the world. Furthermore, the possibility of mutation of the coronavirus is always there as it mutates when it is transmitted from one person to the other.
Mutation takes place through transmission. Mutation is a tool for the virus to evade the immune response produced by vaccination, thereby making the vaccine less effective. Mutation may also nullify the effect of the vaccine designed to fight old variants when it comes to curbing new variants. Pharmaceutical companies, however, claim that they can modify the vaccine to fight any new variants that may emerge. Anyway, vaccines boost the immune response and give less time to the virus after it has entered the human body for mutation.
In recent times, the demographic pattern of the COVID-19 pandemic affecting people has changed. Unlike last year, the pandemic is now affecting even younger populations. People in the 25-59 age bracket are most vulnerable now. Even children have fallen victim to the pandemic. In Nepal, many school children have caught the respiratory contagion with some deaths.
So countries around the world should emphasise universal access to vaccines. It is not fair to see wealthy countries inoculating their younger populations while at-risk groups of people in poorer countries are left out in the cold. In view of the COVID-19 pandemic cutting across all age groups, it will be prudent to follow the triage principle in inoculating vulnerable groups of people, especially in poorer countries. In fact, the COVAX programme was established in April 2020 under the initiative of the WHO in collaboration with the CEPI and GAVI to ensure that every country, whether rich or poor, had access to vaccines.
The world economy has been badly hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The world is struggling to come out of the effects of the pandemic. Even rich countries with sophisticated health systems have been baffled at how to control the pandemic. Even if rich countries could gain economic recovery by curbing the pandemic, such recovery will not be sustainable unless the economies of poorer countries have come back on track.

Global approach
For recovery of the global economy, a global, rather than a national, approach to tackling the crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic is required right now. In this age of globalisation where the world has shrunk to a global village, we should regard ourselves as cosmopolites or global citizens rather than citizens of a particular country. This kind of thinking pattern will encourage us to see the pandemic from a global perspective rather than from a narrow-minded viewpoint.
In this regard, it would be pertinent to quote WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as saying that the world can bring the global COVID-19 pandemic under control in the coming months provided it distributes the necessary resources fairly. All the countries in the world should mull over this dictum and act in tandem towards eliminating the COVID-19 pandemic from the world. This is the need of the hour.

(Former banker, Maharjan has been regularly writing on contemporary issues for this daily since 2000. uttam.maharjan1964@gmail.com