The Vaccine Race is Increasing Global Inequality

Politics
Written By Marina Damji

As citizens in high income countries debate vaccine conspiracy theories, unvaccinated health care workers in the Global South are dying in areas where they are already rare to begin with. The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted global inequality in numerous ways over the past year; developing nations are less likely to have adequate healthcare infrastructure, the means of supporting their citizens during lockdowns, and the resources to rebuild already fragile economies after the impact of the virus. However, the most damning evidence of this inequality we are seeing right now, is the race for the vaccine. 

In the age of the lockdown, perhaps it is unsurprising that most citizens are unable to imagine the world beyond their driveways, and, for most nations, the world beyond their borders. High income countries have been criticised for treating the pandemic as a national problem, rather than a global predicament. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director of the World Health Organisation, warned member states last year on the potential risks of vaccine nationalism in a letter where he stated, “Whilst there is a wish amongst leaders to protect their own people first, the response to this pandemic has to be collective.” However, leaders of high-income countries have not followed through with this advice and instead have engaged in side deals with pharmaceutical companies in order to gain access to the vaccine first. Although understandable—many high income countries have an alarming number of coronavirus-related deaths—this nationalistic approach has been criticised by international organisations, such as the UN, as an inadequate solution to globally eradicating the virus. António Guterres, the secretary general of the UN, has stated in an interview with CNNthat “The only way for us all to be safe is to have a global vaccination campaign.” Therefore, governments cannot treat the virus as a solely national problem and vaccinating their own populations as a solution to this problem because, as we have already seen in the case of the South Africa mutation, the state of the virus in one country has consequences for the rest of the world. High income countries engaging in vaccine nationalism risk the virus mutating in other nations and eventually spreading to their own, where existing vaccines may be rendered ineffective. Early results show that the Pfizer vaccine does work against the new South Africa and Kent mutations, but it is slightly less effective. Currently, the UK has approved the Oxford, Pfizer, and Moderna vaccines for use. We cannot risk these vaccines being rendered ineffectual due to vaccine mutation and more broadly, vaccine nationalism. 

Oxfam has branded the coronavirus the Inequality Virus as the disease is exacerbating already existing global inequality. This has dire consequences for the developing world; Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda, explains in an interview that Africa’s recent progress risks being eroded by the pandemic. Kagame explains that this inequality is not new. Africa has been lagging behind for 20 years because the continent is not considered an “integral part of the global economy” and that therefore this is an issue of equity. However, Kagame acknowledges that, despite Rwanda being “far behind on the queue [for vaccine supply]”, at least the country is on the queue, as “some people are not on the queue at all”. The inequality in vaccine distribution that Kagame acknowledges rings true; experts estimate that most developing countries will not have COVID-19 immunisation until at least 2024. Even when developing nations gain access to vaccinations, problems of inequality still arise. The South African health ministry has reported that South Africa will have to order Oxford’s AstraZeneca vaccine at a price almost 2.5 times higher than a majority of European countries at$5.25 each, despite AstraZeneca claiming in November that its doses would be capped at around $3. This price difference has been justified by claims that European nations will receive doses at a lower cost due to their investment in research and development. Yet this justification can be easily challenged by the fact that 2,000 South Africans participated in clinical trials for the vaccine last year.

The solutions to unequal vaccine distribution remain contested. The WHO, along with several other organisations, set up COVAX in 2020 which is currently the only global initiative working to ensure that vaccines are available to both high-income and low-income countries. However, the scheme has faced several dilemmas since its inception. Firstly, COVAX aims to deliver more than two billion doses to citizens across 190 nations in less than a year. Not only is this an ambitious target, but experts say that, even if such a target is met, it will still fall short of the level of immunity essential to ending the pandemic; the plan is only designed to cover 20% of each nation’s population. Despite its aim to provide equitable access to vaccinations, the COVAX initiative is already revealing stark inequalities between high-income and low-income countries; Canada has recently been criticised for ordering doses from COVAX despite having other agreements for 398 million doses, more than enough to vaccinate the nation’s population of 37 million several times over. Critics have argued that these doses could have potentially gone to countries that are unable to order large quantities of vaccine supplies, like Canada is able to. 

Another solution which low-income countries are rallying for is the sharing of intellectual property. The provision of vaccines remains mostly under pharmaceutical companies. Several developing nations, such as India and South Africa, have tried to combat this through attempting to increase their own supply of vaccinations by making their own in partnership with said pharmaceutical companies. These nations proposed that the World Trade Organisation should waive protections on intellectual property so that developing countries can make their own more affordable vaccinations. However, this proposal was blocked by several high-income countries, arguably due to the influence of vaccine-producing companies, which tend to operate in the Global North. Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, which makes its vaccines in Michigan and Belgium, called sharing intellectual property “nonsense” and “dangerous” in May 2020 and this reluctance seems to have influenced the territories where the vaccine is produced, like the United States and EU, which blocked the proposal in October 2020. The People’s Vaccine Alliance have consequently accusedpharmaceutical companies of preventing equal access to safe and effective vaccinations through their intellectual property protections. One could argue that the blame can therefore be placed on these high-income countries that have allowed intellectual property concerns and the interests of ‘Big Pharma’ to take precedence over human life in the Global South. 

When it first struck, the coronavirus seemed almost like an equaliser. Most countries were heavily affected and the same high death tolls, enforced lockdowns, and economic burdens were the new normal nearly everywhere. However, self-interested, nationalistic responses to the virus have reinforced pre-existing inequalities between the Global North and South; whilst some high income countries are celebrating their enormously successful vaccine rollouts (at the time of writing, the UK has vaccinated nearly 30% of its population), other countries, including 130 countries that are home to 2.5 billion people, are yet to administer a single dose. The solutions to vaccine inequality are complex and require a global effort but they are still feasible; if pharmaceutical companies temporarily relax their intellectual property protections and high-income countries commit to further fund global vaccine sharing initiatives like COVAX, the vaccine race could be less of a competition between nations and more of a global collaboration. The world after the pandemic will be undoubtedly different, but whether it will be a world where existing global inequalities are further exacerbated or a world where global cooperation is the new norm depends on actions taken now.

Works Cited

 

Marina Damji

Marina is a first year studying International Relations, English, and Classical Studies from Manchester. Her primary interests include turtlenecks, Shakespeare, and the penal system of England and Wales. She can usually be found thinking about how much she wants to read (but not actually reading) and maintaining a slight Diet Coke addiction. Her favourite novel is Jane Eyre.

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