What is ‘vaccine nationalism’ and why is it so harmful?
The COVID-19 pandemic has already introduced new words and phrases that were rarely before used in our common vernacular: “furlough”, “social distancing”, “flattening the curve”. Now there is a new phrase in use among experts: “vaccine nationalism”.
Vaccine nationalism occurs when governments sign agreements with pharmaceutical manufacturers to supply their own populations with vaccines ahead of them becoming available for other countries.
Even before many of the now-approved COVID-19 vaccinations had completed their clinical trials, wealthy countries such as Britain, the US, Japan and the European bloc had procured several million doses of the ones that seemed the most promising. As we have seen in the United Kingdom, it was a prudent move. After a devastating death toll, millions of vulnerable people and front-line workers have been offered their first dose of either the Pfizer or Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. Despite the political bickering, Europe will soon follow suit and with a new president in place, the United States is prioritising its own vaccine programme.
According to a new report, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), the US has secured 800 million doses of at least six vaccines in development, with an option to buy about one billion more. The UK has purchased 340 million shots: approximately five doses for each citizen. Although, on the surface, it may seem these countries have ordered more doses than they need, the truth is many of these orders were put in during trial phases of the vaccines when they did not know for sure which vaccines would be successful. Essentially, countries like the UK have put their eggs in several baskets, which has now proven to be a good idea.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has expressed its concerns about this and there are fears that such unilateral deals with wealthy countries will make the vaccines inaccessible to those in some of the poorest parts of the world. “We need to prevent vaccine nationalism,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director of WHO, wrote to member states on August 18, last year. “Whilst there is a wish amongst leaders to protect their own people first, the response to this pandemic has to be collective.”
The concern over less wealthy countries not having access to a vaccine is a serious one, and it is everyone’s problem. The pandemic is a global issue; we have already seen how quickly it can spread around the world, bringing some of the most powerful economies to their knees.
If we were to vaccinate only those countries that bought up the majority of the supplies of the vaccine, it would mean the virus would continue to rage in other non-vaccinated countries. And we have already seen just how quickly and efficiently this virus can mutate when allowed to ravage unchecked through populations anywhere.
The more people it infects, the more likely it is that further mutations will occur and it is inevitable that an “escape” mutation will eventually surface. This is a mutation that allows the virus to evade the immune response set out by vaccinations, which could mean they become less effective in preventing serious illness. The new mutation is then likely to become the dominant strain and will find its way back to our shores, setting off a whole new set of infections in those vaccinated against only the old variants.
The pharmaceutical companies have said they can “tweak” their vaccines to combat any new variants that may occur, but that may take time – something experience has taught us is vital when it comes to containing a pandemic. We also do not yet know if the vaccines stop transmission of the virus – what we do know is that they allow for a quicker immune response by those vaccinated, meaning less time for the virus to potentially mutate inside of its host. For this reason, we need a more global response to this pandemic.
Vaccine nationalism, therefore, is incredibly shortsighted. The alternative is a global vaccine programme and this is what the WHO aims to do through COVAX, a global facility set up in April last year to speed up the development of medicines to treat COVID-19 and make them available everywhere.
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