EDITORIAL: Vaccines or vials, cooperation is key

One of the key lessons from the current pandemic is that society’s strength is only as good as the weakest link in the chain; an outbreak in any part of the world is reason enough for all of mankind to worry given how swiftly diseases travel in this globalised world. Nevertheless, that does not stop countries from the quite-natural instinct to protect their own citizens first. When it comes to preventive medicine such as vaccines, the instinct is all the greater because upon it depend not just lives but also the rhythms of society and beyond it, the economy. With so much tied to the latter, including all-too-critical jobs and a host of other matters including asset prices and the value of pension funds, vaccines are just as critical as cures.

There is no knowing when the elusive vaccine for Covid-19 will materialise. The optimistic guess is six months. And even then, there is no knowing if it will be available in sufficient quantity. From the private sector to universities to government, civil and military labs, the race is on around the world. United States President Donald Trump has spoken of a “Manhattan-style project”, a reference to the group that secretly developed the nuclear bomb in World War II. Indeed, Scientists to Stop Covid-19, a New York-centred group that includes Nobel Prize winning biologist Michael Rosbash, private equity players, oncologists and other specialists, is operating with similar confidentiality to develop treatments, a vaccine and eventually reopen industries in the US.

This is the time for the world to come together to remove a threat that has upended civilisation as we know it. A vaccine must be a public good. Instead, the global cooperation that seemed possible when China shared early information about the virus, has turned into a chimera amid unprecedented geopolitical jostling. The head of French pharmaceutical company Sanofi was reportedly ordered to the Elysee Palace after reportedly saying that the US would have first rights to its vaccine because it was the biggest contributor to Sanofi’s vaccine project. The French government and the European Union hold, correctly, that a vaccine must be for all countries to share.

This is the wrong time to let strategic rivalries undermine the threat to public health. Four of the eight candidate vaccines currently being clinically evaluated are of Chinese origin, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Regrettably, the WHO itself has been hurt by US attacks on its credibility. Another related fear is price gouging by, of all companies, manufacturers of the vials for vaccines to be stored and transported. Even if a vaccine were to be ready quickly, the fear is that the world does not have enough of these little containers made from specialised glass for nearly eight billion doses – what it takes to immunise every human being. Clearly, none of this is a job for a single nation. The time for global cooperation is now.