The worrying vaccination divide
At the International Monetary Fund (IMF)World Bank (WB) meetings held this week in Washington, the participants from the developed and developing economies, the later largely represented by G-20 countries, there was divided atention about a COVID-19 hit world. While the developed economies were looking at the prospects of economic recovery and growth and how to deal with inflation as a result of the lower interest rates policy adopted by the central banks in these countries and how it could endanger growth, there was the other concern of how to control COVID-19 in the poor countries through adequate supply of vaccines from the developed and rich countries.
World Health Organisation ( WHO) Tedros Adhanos Ghebreyesus has urged the developed countries to help spread vaccination in the poor parts of the world who remain vulnerable. He said help is needed to vaccinate 40 per cent of the world population by the end of 2021. Tedros said at an IMF forum, “The donations are not enough. It’s very disappointing that it is taking so long for the world to really commit.”
IMF acknowledged that there is a “great vaccination divide” which was forcing the poor countries to cope with decreasing growth rates and increasing coronavirus infection rates. But there was a clear shit in focus away from dealing with the global pandemic. The French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, said in unambiguous language: “Even if we have to monitor the situation, even if there remain some decisions to be taken on vaccination, especially for the poorest countries, now we are beyond COVID.” The IMF steering commitee communique of October 14 put across the same point of view in a nuanced language: “We will continue to prioritise health spending and protecting the most vulnerable, while shiting focus, as appropriate, from crisis response to promoting growth, and preserving long-term fiscal sustainability.”
The view that is gaining ground in the developed, rich countries, is that the world has moved past COVID-19 because the rich countries are now mostly armed with Covid vaccines, and despite vaccine hesitation in segments of populations, most of them are vaccinated. And many of them are now going into the third, booster shot phase when the póor countries are yet to have access to the first shot.
It will however be difficult for the developed countries to keep the COVID-19 pandemic confined to developing and poor countries because the virus has had a global spillover, and for the last two years the developed countries could not keep the virus out of their territories. For once, the COVID-19 virus is everyone’s problem and not just of a few countries.
According to the International Chamber of Commerce, as reported by Bloomberg, the estimated loss to the global economy due to the skewed access to COVID-19 vaccine, is around US$9.2 trillion.
It has become clear that the production of anti- COVID-19 vaccines is confined to India, the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, China and Russia. These countries prioritised their own people, and what was available to the people in the poor countries was abysmally low. Only three per cent of adults in the poor countries have been vaccinated so far.
What seems to be needed is to step up the production of vaccine doses in the countries where vaccine production has a string base as in the countries mentioned above. But many of the private pharmaceutical companies have been bargaining hard about the terms for sharing the vaccines at prices that would reward their research and development base. In this kind of a situation, it becomes necessary for the governments of rich countries to buy the vaccines and donate it to WHO’S COVAX setup, that will make it easier to reach the vaccines where they are needed the most. It is also a fact that production botlenecks cannot be overcome easily. The various pharmaceutical companies with their different brands of antiCOVID-19 vaccines might have to pool their numbers. It requires extraordinary cooperation at the level of governments and that of private companies. This cannot be achieved without a sense of solidarity.