Omicron: Vaccine nationalism will only perpetuate the pandemic Coronavirus pandemic

The United Kingdom and the rich nations of Europe are in terror. Not surprisingly, the pooling of large parts of the global vaccine supply has led to the emergence of new dangerous variants of COVID-19. And once again, rich countries are punishing victims of the world’s vaccine inequality by closing borders to anyone in the nations of southern Africa.

Of course, the Omicron variant, as designated by the World Health Organization, has not only been found in South Africa. Cases have been found in Asia and Europe, including the UK, but the Global South is blamed for this, and the ways to deal with COVID-19 have been removed. This fits perfectly with how rich countries have dealt with the pandemic.

At each stage of the response, expectations of collaboration have been discarded. Western nations have collected vaccines, and even packaged them, rather than giving them on a scale or on time. For more than a year, the United Kingdom and the European Union have blocked a proposal from South Africa and India, including vaccines to suspend the intellectual property of COVID-19 technologies. Most countries in the world recognize that this is key to increasing vaccine production to the levels needed to end this pandemic. But for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, it is more important to protect pharmaceutical monopolies.

Only seven per cent of African people are fully vaccinated and the latest data show that only one in four African health workers is fully protected. This is not only morally grotesque, but also dangerous: it creates a breeding ground for new varieties.

Time is of the essence in this pandemic. Professor Sarah Gilbert of Oxford University warns that stopping transmission in all corners of the world is essential to stop the virus from evolving and mutating dangerous ones.

As in all parts of the world, African governments have made mistakes in this pandemic. In fact, my organization in South Africa, the Health Justice Initiative, has talked about the shortcomings of our government, including the transparency of the vaccine contract.

South Africa has also had to deal with severe political violence in mid-2021 and the government has changed its health minister twice in 12 months. This has exacerbated devastating job losses and a hunger crisis, often exacerbated by irrational travel bans.

But the long-term inability to achieve a sustainable health system in South Africa’s apartheid era, sustainable levels of poverty, and a decent number of vaccines in time meant the government had to tackle an impossible task. For much of 2021, with a limited supply from around the world bridged by the Global North, South Africa was a drip-fed supply of vaccines.

AstraZeneca was initially one of the few vaccines to reach Africa. But the misinformation of Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb, who questioned the effectiveness and safety of the owner, exacerbated by EU leaders, also led to distrust of the vaccine. Then use was discontinued in many African countries, and it stopped in South Africa, with the emerging Beta variant and India’s export restrictions also factoring in.

The African Union negotiated a new agreement with Johnson & Johnson through the South African company Aspen Pharmacare. But most of the 220 to 400 million vaccines prescribed have not yet been given. Even worse, during South Africa’s third devastating wave, Johnson & Johnson exported millions of filled and completed vaccines to South Africa to highly embedded nations in Europe and North America.

In August, working with the South African government and Cape Town biotechnology company Afrigen City, the WHO began building the first global manufacturing center to produce mRNA vaccines and share them with the world because of the racist belief that Africa cannot safely manufacture vaccines. . Embarrassingly, Modern and Pfizer have refused to share knowledge with the hub.

So African scientists themselves need to do reverse engineering of the process, which may take some time. Sensing a PR crisis, these companies are trying to avoid the center with parallel partial licensing agreements. Far from well-being, these agreements seem designed to undermine the WHO’s efforts.

Along the way, the secrets of vaccination contracts for companies with extensive compensation against delays, misinformation and liability clauses have heightened distrust of vaccine companies, aided by an increasingly greasy vaccine movement and politicians seeking points.

We need a different way of doing things. More than 100 states have called for the suspension of the intellectual property rights emergency for at least a year in technologies that are crucial to ending the pandemic. The exceptions would make it easier for South Africa and other countries to produce vaccines, especially to increase supply for all and save lives. But the UK and EU countries have repeatedly blocked it, for no reason.

In contrast, South Africa has been a constant global building partner in the pandemic – with hundreds of volunteers working on vaccine trials and its advanced scientific surveillance system helping to quickly find new variants of COVID-19.

If we do not want COVID-19 to continue to exacerbate the racist and colonial world order, we need change. And believe it or not, it would also benefit the UK and Europe. Because you can’t set rigid policies or build a wall high enough to keep the effects of vaccine equality out. We need to remove all barriers and remove all barriers to vaccine production, and intellectual property is the first of these. We need solidarity and cooperation, not bans on knee travel.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.