EDITORIAL: The Straits Times says- Vaccine nationalism is not the way

World Health Organisation (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus issued an apposite warning to nations that it would be impossible to rebuild the global economy without vaccinating the planet’s highest-risk populations simultaneously. His view was that the fastest way to end the pandemic and reopen economies is to start by protecting the highest-risk populations everywhere, rather than the entire populations of just some countries. Ideally, a vaccine would be available for all at one go. But that would be a logistical impossibility. In the event, the WHO chief has made the important point: That those at highest risk – front-line workers in health and social care settings who come into contact with particularly vulnerable groups and are essential to protecting the population – must be considered to be a single international category.

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Nations must abjure the natural temptation to vaccinate all or most of their populations at the expense of those highest-risk groups elsewhere. For example, Australia’s deal with British drugmaker AstraZeneca, to produce and distribute enough doses of a potential vaccine for its population of 25 million, is understandable from a national point of view. But it might not advance the country’s international economic interests.

A study published in the Harvard Business Review draws attention to the dangers of vaccine nationalism, the perhaps natural but ultimately short-sighted temptation for wealthy countries, in particular, to prioritise domestic markets and hoard vaccines because they have the means to do so. Vaccine nationalism is not only “morally reprehensible”, but is also the wrong way to reduce transmission globally, the study notes. Global transmission matters because Covid-19 will continue to disrupt supply chains and thus economies if some pandemic-stricken countries have impeded access to vaccines. Indeed, this should be a lesson already learnt, given how nationalism exacerbated the pandemic in its early days because of hoarding by some countries that led to shortages of protective gear. Hence the urgency of the WHO’s outreach to every country, urging them to join its global shared vaccine programme quickly.

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The global health agency has spelled out as well who will get its eventual coronavirus jabs first. Nine of the 29 vaccines being tested on humans currently form part of the Covax Global Vaccines Facility. Just over 90 countries are signed up to Covax, while another 80 have expressed interest but have yet to commit themselves to the programme. They should act soon. There are times when internationalism is the only realistic form of nationalism. Covid-19 reinforces that point in a world that is globalised beyond epidemiological borders. Countries need to act in concert against the coronaviral scourge.