Ireland will remain in lockdown until March at least, then what? We seem to assume the development of safe, efficacious vaccines guarantees an end to this disaster, that this is how we will get to zero Covid in 2021. But we will not.
As long as the virus is freely circulating in any country on the globe, no country will be able to claim it is safe. We need to immunise the majority of the world’s population to finally beat this virus.
But, according to the World Health Organisation, only 25 vaccines had been administrated in low-income countries by January 18th, in comparison with at least 39 million doses of vaccine in high-income ones. Wealthier nations have been buying up enough doses to vaccinate their entire populations nearly three times over and yet continue to squabble over access to each new vaccine as it becomes available.
Delays in the supply of vaccines to any country or group of countries can quickly give rise to serious political conflict
We are now so obsessed with looking after “our own”, that vaccine nationalism is preventing many of us from seeing the obvious: that problems with vaccine supply to any country will allow the virus to circulate, thrive and ultimately come back to ours, even if we successfully get rid of it from our tiny island. Right now, the virus is being given continued opportunity to spread and to mutate across the globe, with the emergence of new variants that are resistant to current vaccines a particular threat.
This past week, we have seen how the grave risks posed by vaccine nationalism spark political dissent. Delays in the supply of vaccines to any country or group of countries can quickly give rise to serious political conflict. At a time when we desperately need the international community to work together, we cannot afford division and dysfunction across countries and continents such as we have seen in recent days.
Vaccine nationalism is not only short-sighted but also deeply unethical. We are facing a historic moral catastrophe if we fail to act as one. People are being denied their right to health and medical care based on where they live and what they can afford, which breaches international human rights law. States are obliged to uphold these rights and work from the principle of international co-operation and assistance to protect the lives and health of everyone, instead of pursuing short-sighted competition for individual gain.
The route to zero Covid all over the planet is by ensuring there are enough vaccines at accessible prices to meet global demand. Amnesty International has named equal access to SarsCoV2 vaccines as one of its top priorities. To achieve this, Amnesty has joined the People’s Alliance for Vaccines.
The alliance has the support of – among others – Oxfam, UNAids, Nobel Laureate in Economics Joseph E Stiglitz, former president of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, together with many current and former prime ministers, presidents and other global leaders. The alliance is calling for a temporary “waiver” on certain aspects of the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (Trips) agreement – the international agreement on patents and other intellectual property.
By doing this, vaccine production could be made accessible to poorer countries at cost price.
A precedent has already been set. For years, HIV therapies cost over $10,000 (€8,350) a year per patient because pharmaceutical companies kept their intellectual property secret, their products scarce and production unreasonably expensive. Millions of people in poorer countries could, therefore, not access these life-saving treatments. Due to a Trips waiver, countries such as Thailand and India were then able to produce their own versions of these medications at significantly lower costs. The costs of Aids treatments plummeted all over the world.
Human rights and health for all must be prioritised ahead of corporate profits and political interests
Hundreds of millions of euros of taxpayers’ money have been invested in the development of Covid-19 vaccines, yet the information, technology and know-how for producing these vaccines is owned by a few companies. If the patent and licensing expenses were temporarily waived, and technological know-how shared, many more companies, particularly those in poorer countries, could go into vaccine production, thus reducing costs and getting us closer to the billions of doses required to clear the planet of this virus.
South Africa and India have already proposed a temporary waiver of Trips, and are supported by nearly 100 low and middle-income countries including Pakistan, Mozambique and Bolivia. The EU, the UK, Canada, the US and other wealthy nations are currently not supportive of the waiver. During February and March this issue will be discussed in the informal and formal council meetings at the World Trade Organisation. We need the EU as a bloc to promote an effective global response to the pandemic.
The lack of support from wealthier nations for the Trips waiver has been because they consider voluntary mechanisms an adequate solution, such as proposed by Covax, the Covid-19 arm of Gavi (Global Association for Vaccine Implementation). Covax promotes the pooling by countries of their resources and buys vaccines for distribution to poorer countries; already Covax has managed to secure 700 million doses of vaccines to be distributed between the 92 lower income countries that have signed up.
But this is like giving a person a fish . . . it is a short-term solution, intended as an emergency measure to ensure vaccination of the most vulnerable 20 per cent of the global population.
It is grossly underfunded and will lead to a two-tier system as wealthier countries can receive doses enough for 50 per cent of their population, while lower income countries can receive enough for only 20 per cent. The Trips waiver would enable countries to make their own vaccines; it remains one of the most effective solutions to meeting the global need for Covid-19 vaccines.
It should not be inevitable that the virus continues to spread and circulate, destroying lives and economies across the planet. But we need strong global leadership, particularly of wealthy countries such as ours, to fight for a global response, not just a national one. Human rights and health for all must be prioritised ahead of corporate profits and political interests.
None of us are safe unless all of us are safe.
Cliona O'Farrelly is professor of comparative immunology, Trinity College Dublin. Colm O'Gorman is executive director of Amnesty International Ireland