A 'me first' approach to vaccination won't defeat Covid

Vaccines manufactured in India for the global vaccine access programme, Covax, have reached Ghana, Ivory Coast and Colombia over the past 10 days. This was undoubtedly a moment of celebration that the miracle of science was being shared – but it was offset by the shame that many countries hit hard during the pandemic have still not received any vaccines.

Safe and effective vaccines have been developed and approved at record speed, giving us a crucial new way, in addition to traditional public health measures, to protect people from the virus. Now we must ensure they’re available to everyone, everywhere. Sharing doses, boosting manufacturing by removing barriers and ensuring that we use data effectively to target leftbehind communities is key to ending this crisis.

I appreciate that India is sharing doses now, and also welcome G7 countries committing to sharing a portion of their vaccines, as well as pledging significant amounts of new funding to Covax.

However, of the 225m vaccine doses that have been administered so far, the vast majority have been in a handful of rich and vaccine-producing countries, while most low- and middle-income countries watch and wait. A me-first approach might serve short-term political interests, but it is self-defeating and will lead to a protracted recovery, with trade and travel continuing to suffer.

Any opportunity to beat this virus should be grabbed with both hands. New variants are appearing that show signs of being more transmissible, more deadly and less susceptible to vaccines. The threat is clear: as long as the virus is spreading anywhere, it has more opportunities to mutate and potentially undermine the efficacy of vaccines everywhere. We could end up back at square one.

Heads of state, international agencies and civil society groups have already signed up to a vaccine equity declaration that calls on governments and manufacturers to speed up regulatory processes and boost manufacturing.

But boosting manufacturing won’t happen by itself. We are living through an exceptional moment in history, and must rise to the challenge. Whether it’s dose sharing, tech transfer or voluntary licensing, as the WHO’s own Covid-19 Technology Access Pool initiative encourages, or waiving intellectual property rights, as South Africa and India have suggested, we need to pull out all the stops.

Flexibilities in trade regulations exist for emergencies, and surely a global pandemic, which has forced many societies to shut down and caused so much harm to business – both large and small – qualifies. We need to be on a war footing, and it’s important to be clear about what is needed.

First, we need sustainable vaccine manufacturing and production across the globe. This will be useful in this pandemic and critical for future ones. Some companies, like AstraZeneca, have shared their licences so that vaccines can be manufactured at multiple sites. Others, like Pfizer and Sanofi, have made agreements to transfer technology, such as the finishing of vaccine vials. Some governments, such as Canada, have also made deals with individual companies and are setting up entirely new manufacturing units, which will produce new doses in a matter of months.

These are significant steps but we cannot rest until everyone has access, and we need to ensure sustainable vaccine supply chains for the long term that are vastly bigger than what we have now. This will become even more important if we have to vaccinate people with boosters or reformulate vaccines to tackle variants. Waiving patents temporarily won’t mean innovators miss out. Like during the HIV crisis or in a war, companies will be paid royalties for the products they manufacture.

There are some things that the private sector does really well and there are other areas where governments need to step in. I don’t believe that globally we’re exercising our full manufacturing muscle at present. For example, some manufacturers have not been able to produce successful vaccine candidates, which is to be expected, but their production facilities could be repurposed for those vaccines that have been proven to work. To this