Every day, when Mandy Malambo goes to work in the hospital where she works as a nurse Zambia, She experienced the same worst-case scenario in her mind. “You think, what if today is the day I sign? Coronavirus? “Malambo was lucky, she took a dose vaccine, But most of her colleagues have not been vaccinated.In Zambia, only 1.1% of the population has received both jabs and Coronavirus The cases are on the rise.This is in sharp contrast to the UK, where more than half of the population has received two doses vaccine We are tentatively starting to think about the future after the pandemic.It’s tempting to focus on the positive, but go beyond the UK and Pandemic Still raging.Last week, there were 4 million new Covid cases across the country worldMany of them are in countries where people have not yet been vaccinated.Nearly 70% of people worldwide have not received a dose vaccine In low-income countries, only 1.2% of people have received at least one dose.
Bill GatesHe is working through the foundation work he co-chairs to resolve this vaccine apartheid problem, and he said urgent action is needed. “As long as there are a large number of unvaccinated people-whether at home or abroad-we are at risk of continued surges and other variants that could put us all at risk. The only way to escape the cycle of recovery and relapse It’s to provide everyone with a vaccine as soon as possible.” In other words, if we don’t look at Covid on a global scale, it is more likely to mutate and respond less to vaccines—so we are facing a war between variants and vaccines. at the same time, International Monetary Fund and World Bank It warned that if vaccines cannot be distributed more equally, international trade and travel will not return to normal, and the global economy will continue to be affected.
WHO’s goal is to vaccinate 10% of each country’s population by the end of September, and it is estimated that at least 60% to 70% of the world’s population will be vaccinated to achieve “global immunity”-but how realistic is it? It is not that there is a shortage of vaccines-for example, in the UK, we have several times more vaccines than the population needs. More importantly, they are not shared equally or not quickly enough, coupled with early supply issues affecting Africa-leading to calls for sharing patents and enabling Africa to make vaccines.
“We need more high-income countries to share vaccine doses faster,” Gates said. “There are more funds to purchase doses for low-income countries in 2022 and beyond. As doses increase towards the end of the year, we need to support countries so that they are ready to accept and manage them as soon as possible.” Germany and France are already planning. China, the race to provide boosters in the West will not help, putting pressure on the supply of developing countries. The WHO has called for a global moratorium on vaccination until enough people around the world receive two doses of the vaccine.
As long as there are large numbers of unvaccinated people-whether at home or abroad-we are likely to continue to proliferate and other mutations that may put us all at risk.The only way to get out of the cycle of recovery and relapse is to provide everyone with a vaccine as soon as possible
Covax is a coalition of international health agencies and non-profit organizations supported by the United Nations. It was established last year to prevent the problems we are facing now and to ensure that poor countries receive vaccines as quickly as rich countries. However, it has been struggling, and one of the problems is that richer countries pay high prices for vaccines. In January of this year, Covax promised to provide 100 million doses of vaccine by the end of March, but the current number is less than 50 million doses.
Criticized by Strive Masiyiwa, Special Envoy to the African Vaccine Procurement Working Group of the African Union Kovacs He also stated that the solution is to let African countries produce their own vaccines, and obtain suitable equipment to manufacture and distribute vaccines in the African licensed production and support regions, rather than conducting piecemeal contract transactions. “The truth is, it’s not about sharing. It’s about allowing us to access production. Relaxing contracts and releasing supply capacity to other countries; that’s what we are asking for.”
Made a promise at the meeting G7 Robert Yates, head of the Center for Global Health Security at the Chatham House, said that 870 million additional doses were shared, but it was just a “symbolic trickle.” “The G7’s performance is sad,” Yates continued. “We don’t need to transfer funds or technology around the world to make it easier to launch vaccines. This is real politics-politicians put their people’s lives first, which is reasonable for high-risk groups, but now We took the risk of vaccine segregation. It is commendable that when we provided funds to the United Kingdom and the United States, they had already appealed to the United Kingdom and the United States. But we considered that health workers in other countries were 16 and 17 years old before It is inefficient and immoral for children to be vaccinated at the age of three years.” Yates added: “There is not enough public outrage. People are not asking leaders to promote vaccines around the world.”
Some people worry that we will see a repeat of the HIV and AIDS situation, where it will take ten years to produce drugs that are widely used all over the world to fight the disease, or swine flu. The rich countries buy the vaccines while the poor countries suffer. “This rampant nationalism does not herald other existential threats facing humanity,” Yates said. “Where will it lead us on issues such as climate change that we need to cooperate on a global scale?”
This rampant nationalism does not augur well for other existential threats to mankind.Where does it lead us on issues such as climate change that we need to cooperate on a global scale?
Will Hall, global policy and advocacy manager at The Wellcome Trust, breaks down the demand into three areas: “Bold leadership, sharing doses to speed things up, and using Covax while trying to build supply and funding.” A partnership has been established , Providing vaccines to those who need it is called the “Acquisition Covid Tool Accelerator”, but this year’s funding gap is $16.6 billion.
Leadership has also been “lack”, saying Tony Blair He said: “Unfortunately, the scientific and medical progress we have seen in response to the pandemic has not been supported by a similar level of leadership in the international community, although this situation may be changing.”
But just distributing vaccines is not enough. “We need to maximize supply; coordinate supply to countries that can use them; and strategically vaccinate key populations to minimize mortality and transmission, and maintain important services. Countries need our support to improve Their ability to provide vaccines so that they can put them into weapons as efficiently as possible.”
Providing vaccines to those in need is a huge challenge. For example, Pfizer must keep cold, and some African officials worry that their power grid may be overwhelmed by having so many refrigerators. In Chad, Pfizer only has the ability to distribute in major cities.
Labour MPs include Emily Thornbury A 10-point plan was sent to our government in May to increase production and distribution, but no action has been seen yet. “This is a catastrophic failure of global leadership,” Thornberry said. “We are stuck in a cycle. There are billions of people who have not been vaccinated, so new variants are spreading all over the world, all attention is shifted to the United States and Europe, indifferent to poorer countries, and the cycle begins again. The only one to break it The way is to substantially increase production and distribution.”
This year there is also an opportunity for leaders to make commitments on vaccines. G20 In October. “Let’s hope they pick up the ball from where G7 lost the ball,” Yates said. “What we regret is that we didn’t take the vaccination of the world more seriously.” Malambo hopes that the comments of people like Gates mean that the world is listening. “Now we need to advertise the benefits of vaccines to everyone.”
