PICKUP IN VACCINE DISTRIBUTION
COVID-19 vaccination is now underway in more than 50 countries, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Jan. 21, calling it "a stunning scientific achievement and a much-needed source of hope" for safe and effective vaccines to be developed and approved in less than one year.
In pooling talents and funds, humans are winning in the race against a novel coronavirus. To dispel doubts and assure the public of vaccine safety, leaders and high-level officials in countries like Indonesia and Turkey took a dose live on TV before mass roll-outs.
Despite the good news, vaccine distribution came as a drag. In the United States, though the country was among the first to develop and approve COVID-19 vaccines, Americans got poised to roll up their sleeves for a shot only to find a lack of organization, like queue-jumping and deliberate waste of doses in some states.
"Operation Warp Speed has failed to come anywhere close to its original goal of vaccinating 20 million people against the coronavirus by the end of 2020," said a New York Times editorial. "That's an astonishing failure."
Outside the developed part of the world, the imbalance in distribution loomed large. While more than 39 million doses of vaccine have now been administered in at least 49 higher-income countries, just 25 doses have been given in one lowest-income country, Tedros said on Jan. 18, warning of "a catastrophic moral failure."
A week later, Tedros, citing two new studies, added that it would also be an economic failure if the world doesn't deliver equitable access to vaccines. "Vaccine nationalism might serve short-term political goals," he said at a media briefing. "But it's in every nation's own medium and long-term economic interest to support vaccine equity."
Hope is on the horizon. A global plan named COVAX has been launched to provide innovative and equitable access to COVID-19 diagnostics, treatments and vaccines. After mistakes made during the HIV and H1N1 pandemics, Tedros said, "We have an opportunity to beat history."
In fortifying a defense line involving all humans, rich and poor, there is a role for China. Considered safe, effective, and easy to store, vaccines from Chinese producers have been approved in such countries as Brazil, Chile, Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Indonesia, Pakistan and Serbia.
Expectations have run high. When a million doses of China's Sinopharm coronavirus vaccines arrived at the Belgrade Airport in mid-January, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic was there to welcome the shipment. "As an ordinary person and the president of Serbia, I am convinced of the quality of the Chinese vaccine," he said.
"Vaccinating only a sector of the world population will not be the solution, since the world is in constant motion," Rafael Vilasanjuan, a department director at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, recently told Xinhua, "so it is essential to understand that if the problem is global, then so is the solution."
