Global Covid-19 vaccine race spurs national pride

WITH testing under way on five experimental vaccines in China and four in the US, the race to produce a vaccine for Covid-19 has taken on political dimensions that echo jockeying for technological dominance during the Cold War, including the space race after the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and the early US fears of a “missile gap” with the Soviet Union.

The same day in mid-march that the US launched human testing of its first experimental coronavirus vaccine, scientists in China announced that their own trial would begin. Days after a company unveiled the partial data from the first US human tests earlier this month, a complete report of the Chinese trial was published in a prestigious medical journal. Both countries are also taking huge financial risks to speed up production of possible vaccines before they know any are safe and effective – a gambit to ensure their citizens won’t have to wait. The nation that produces the first safe and effective vaccine will gain not only bragging rights but also a fast track to put its people back to work, a powerful public health tool to protect its citizens and a precious resource to reward allies. In an election year in the US the prospect of a successful vaccine by year’s end could also be a potent campaign tool.

With 10 experimental vaccines in human tests – five in China, four in the US and one in Britain – the science is moving forward with unprecedented speed and collaboration.

But with the world increasingly divided along nationalistic lines, the race has become political.

Scientists see the race as one in which academic research groups, companies and countries are working in rare unity against a common enemy – the virus. But health policy experts already see “vaccine nationalism” creeping in.

President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he would terminate the US relationship with the World Health Organization, which he accused of misleading the world about the coronavirus at the urging of the Chinese government. The US skipped an international pledging conference early last month that put billions towards developing a vaccine for the world.

Political leaders criticised for their handling of the pandemic and eager to notch a win have already begun securing doses for their own citizens – as the US did in making a $1.2 billion (R20.3bn) investment to secure 300 million doses of a vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford and the pharmaceutical company Astrazeneca. The first 100 million doses have been committed to the UK. Companies are spreading their manufacturing plants across multiple countries, a partial protection against the possibility that any nation prohibits exports.

Who gets the vaccine first matters not just for national pride but because that country’s citizens will almost certainly get first access to limited doses – even if the virus is raging in another part of the world.

China has focused its public diplomacy efforts on the developing world. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, recently said China would seek to ensure developing nations have access to any Chinese vaccine, an offer that could help to strengthen these diplomatic bonds if the Chinese vaccine proves effective.