The Link Between COVID-19 Omicron Variant And Global Vaccine Inequity, By Experts

*Scientists have severally warned wealthy countries to share vaccines with poorer countries or risk the emergence of new mutant variants, restating same mantra: ‘No one is safe until everyone is safe’

*‘The longer vaccine inequity persists, the more opportunity this virus has to spread and evolve in ways we cannot predict nor prevent. We are all in this together,’ says Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO

Gbenga Kayode | ConsumerConnect

Following the outbreak of the new COVID-19 Omicron variant, scientists once more, have warned wealthy countries to share the virus vaccines with poorer countries of the world, or risk the emergence of more new mutant variants.

ConsumerConnect reports cases of the Omicron variant of the novel Coronavirus pandemic have been discovered in Nigeria, South Africa, United Kingdom (UK), United States (US), and a few others in the past weeks.

For almost as long as COVID-19 has been around, scientists, academics and campaigners have called on wealthy countries to share vaccines around the world — not only to protect people in those countries, but also to reduce the risk of new mutant variants emerging that could evade vaccines for everyone.

Those sounding the alarm have repeated the same mantra: ‘No one is safe until everyone is safe.’

Despite these warnings, this is exactly what appears to have happened, some of these experts say, NBCNews report said.

Recall the new Omicron variant reportedly emerged in Southern Africa with a large number of mutations that experts say may allow it to transmit more easily and possibly reduce existing immunity.

However, there are other reports noting that cases of the same new COVID-19 strain had already been observed and found in other parts of the world, especially in Europe before it was detected in South Africa recently.

All humans should access COVID-19 Vaccines, says Nigerian Minister

This publication had reported that Nigeria also recently warned that lack of COVID-19 vaccinations by developing countries and emerging markets would provide a fertile ground for the Coronavirus to mutate, thus threatening the progress already recorded in the these parts of the global community.

Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Honourable Minister for Information and Culture, had issued the warning at the recent 24th General Assembly of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) Wednesday, December 1, 2021, in Madrid, Spain.

Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s Minister for Information and Culture

Mr. Segun Adeyemi, Special Assistant To The President (Media), Office of the Minister of Information and Culture, Wednesday stated Alhaji Mohammed was speaking against the background of the latest mutation (Omicron) of the COVID-19 virus, which has triggered a wave of travel bans on some countries in Africa.

Adeyemi said the Minister noted that access to COVID-19 Vaccines should be based on the principles grounded in the right of every human to enjoy the highest attainable standard of health without discrimination on the basis of race, religion, political belief, economic or any other social condition.

‘Africa right now is essentially a superincubator’

In her remarks on the latest development in regard to the emergence of yet another Coronavirus variant on the worldwide scene, Andrea Taylor, Assistant Director of programmes at the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, a leading authority on global vaccine supply, said: “Africa right now is essentially a superincubator.”

Taylor stated that the emergence of a new variant “is exactly what experts have been warning about for months.”

COVID-19 Vaccines

She said: “We saw what happened with India, which gave rise to the Delta variant. And we said, ‘Look, this is going to happen in Africa where there is uncontrolled transmission.’ ”

Omicron COVID-19 cases in South Africa

It was learnt the highest number of Omicron cases so far has been detected in South Africa, which has a 35 percent fully vaccinated rate.

That rate is higher than most of Africa’s and appears to be driven by vaccine hesitancy, rather than a lack of supply, report said.

Nonetheless, experts say this does not mean the variant mutated in South Africa, just that the country has better testing and genomic sequencing technology than its neighbours.

Duke Global Health Innovation Center Deputy Director Taylor and other experts maintained it is just as likely that Omicron originated elsewhere in Africa, which typically has struggled to obtain enough shots amid the frantic, Northern Hemisphere-dominated scramble for supply.

Dr. Seth Berkley, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a leading partner in the global vaccine sharing programme COVAX, was also quoted to have said in an e-mail “while we still need to know more about Omicron, we do know that as long as large portions of the world’s population are unvaccinated, variants will continue to appear, and the pandemic will continue to be prolonged.

“We will only prevent variants from emerging if we are able to protect all of the world’s population, not just the wealthy parts,”

Berkley stated: “The world needs to work together to ensure equitable access to vaccines, now.”

The debate around the world has apparently refocused attention on global vaccine inequality, which Taylor says is “worse than ever” — and accusations that rich countries have been hoarding shots for themselves.

Moreover, low-income countries, most of which are in Africa, have received just 0.6 percent of the nearly 8billion shots that have been administered, according to the World Health Organiation (WHO).

While WHO last week noted that just 1 in 4 frontline healthcare workers on the African continent are fully vaccinated.

Similarly, Alhaji Mohammed also disclosed at the recent UNWTO summit in Spain, that his country, Nigeria, had only vaccinated about 5 percent of the country’s 214million population thus far.

Meanwhile, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO, informed a meeting Monday, November 29, 2021, that “no country can vaccinate its way out of the pandemic alone.

The United States (US) has done more than anyone else in terms of donating vaccines abroad, having shipped 235 million of 1.1 billion pledged doses. It also says it will donate $4 billion to COVAX, according to report.

“To beat the pandemic here, we need to beat it everywhere,” US President Joe Biden told a virtual summit on the pandemic in September.

The US efforts are “commendable,” according to Dr. Tom Kenyon, a former Director of the CDC’s Center for Global Health.

However, Dr. Kenyon and other experts take a look at the bigger picture and say Washington’s efforts have done nothing to solve the world’s vaccine inequality almost a year after the rollout began.

Practical measures to fix vaccination disparities

Report indicates some experts and campaigners have proffered a way to fix the immediate disparity would be through “line-swapping”.

According to them, this strategy refers to a situation in which wealthy countries that have enough shots allow poorer countries to jump ahead of them in the COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer’s distribution list.

But ultimately, many agree that the only way to solve the crisis in the long term is to increase production and distribution of the virus vaccines for extensive vaccinations in more locations across the world.

According to experts, this could involve sharing intellectual property for how vaccines are made.

The US is said to have supported this idea but drugmakers, the European Union (EU) and others have opposed it because they say it would curb incentives for pharma companies to invest and innovate.

Again, Taylor at Duke University stated: “This isn’t a pasta can where everyone can just put in a few notes.

“If each of these high-income countries is separately doing what they think is their bit, what we end up with is this fragmented patchwork that does not add up to a coordinated solution to the problem we’re all facing.”

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