Shameful emergence of vaccine apartheid in the US

SINCE the beginning of this month, the US is finally beginning to provide its donation of Covid-19 vaccines to South Africa and other African nations.

Acting US ambassador to South Africa, Todd Haskell, said that was part of President Joe Biden's promise to give 500 million vaccines to the world by the end of next year.

As of June 21, the US announced its plans to distribute the first 80 million Covid-19 vaccine doses donated by the US from its domestic supply to support global Covid-19 vaccination efforts. Of the 80 million doses, the US has allocated 15 million for African countries, selected in co-ordination with the AU. Additional doses will be allocated to Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, etc.

The charitable behaviour deserves applause. But it is a late gift. One Chinese proverb says, “It is better to send people charcoal in a winter frenzy, than adding flowers on colourful silk”. In other words, what America has done and is doing in terms of contributions to the global fight against Covid-19, is far from timely or good enough.

It has been more than a year and a half since the outbreak and the fast spreading of Covid-19 in Africa. During this period, the much-needed American vaccine donations keep being “flowers on colourful silk” instead of “charcoal in a winter frenzy”.

The badly delayed arrival of vaccines is one key reason for Africa's third Covid wave. It is reasonable to assume that if the American vaccines had come earlier, the third or second wave would not have been as severe.

Data on Covid-19 vaccine production from Airfinity shows that until early last month China was the largest exporter of Covid-19 vaccines, and that Chinese vaccines are mainly exported to a handful of low-income countries in central and South-East Asia, South America, and North Africa.

Besides China, the EU, South Korea, and India have all made contributions via exporting Covid-19 vaccines. The US, meanwhile, has yet to export any Covid-19 vaccines, as it has prioritised vaccinating its population first.

Africa has received just 1.7% of the world's 3.7 billion doses, and only 1.5% of the population have been fully inoculated. That is why Africa and other developing countries keep suffering a global vaccination gap from Trump to the Biden administration, or in President Cyril Ramaphosa's words, “vaccine apartheid that is allowing wealthy countries to buy up vaccines while less-resourced developing countries languish in the queue”.

In America, people of colour were more harmed by the epidemic. The infection and death rate of Covid-19 in the US showed significant racial differences, with the infection, hospitalisation and death rates of African-Americans being three times, five times, and twice that of white people respectively, says a report by the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent to the UN Human Rights Council on August 21 last year.

It is ironic that Washington has been both the victim (or, more accurately, poor and black people) and the cause of global vaccine apartheid.

The emergence of vaccine apartheid inside and outside the US is a great regret, and the international community needs to draw lessons from it.