Scientists are still scrambling to determine the exact nature of the danger posed by the omicron variant, but that hasn’t stopped much of the world from isolating southern Africa through border closures and airline bans. These efforts amount to using a band-aid to stop a hemorrhage.
As long as access to vaccines is lopsided and large areas of the world don’t receive the adequate assistance needed to combat the spread of COVID-19, new variants and mutations will continue to plague the international community. Instead of isolating southern African nations, the rest of the world should use the emergence of the omicron variant as a catalyst to find new and constructive ways of working together in this prolonged battle against COVID-19.
It’s no coincidence that the latest variant emerged in South Africa. With millions of immunocompromised people suffering from other viruses such as HIV, South Africa is a perfect petri dish for the emergence of new variants. But this is nothing new.
Swift surveillance of COVID-19
What’s remarkable is the speed at which South African scientists could identify the new variant, alert the international community, and begin working on sequencing the mutation. Thanks to South Africa’s swift surveillance of COVID-19 and the established scientific sector, the international community is in a much better position than during the early days of the last significant mutation with the delta variant.
No country or group of countries can fight this pandemic by itself,
and no number of travel bans will ultimately prevent the virus from
moving around the world. We need to embrace the spirit of cooperation to ensure that we can put the pandemic behind us
Read More: December 6, a day never to forget
Within hours of the announcement, the United Kingdom placed a travel ban on South Africa and other regions. South Africa is entering the height of its tourism season, driven heavily by British and European tourists. The travel ban was viewed with scorn and felt like a punishment for many South Africans.
Even the New York Times noted that South Africa “put its sophisticated disease surveillance and research systems to good use, and quickly shared the results with the world, only to have its transparency repaid with damaging travel bans.”
Part of the dismay over the travel bans stems from the fact that Western nations haven’t done enough to protect the rest of the world against COVID-19. Vaccine manufacturers have resisted calls to open up the manufacturing of vaccines in emerging market countries like South Africa to speed up vaccination rates. Less than 7 per cent of the African continent is vaccinated.
Wake-up call to the worldSouth African President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the issue of vaccine inequality head-on. “We have said that vaccine inequality not only costs lives and livelihoods in those countries that are denied access but that it also threatens global efforts to overcome the pandemic,” he said. “The emergence of the omicron variant should be a wake-up call to the world that vaccine inequality cannot be allowed to continue. Until everyone is vaccinated, everyone will be at risk.”
To be clear, this isn’t a new issue. Since vaccines hit the market, there have been repeated calls to open up manufacturing worldwide to improve access. But vaccine manufacturers and their supporters have resisted. In April, Bill Gates underscored his opposition to expanding the manufacturing of vaccines to developing nations because he felt that most countries didn’t have the technical capacity needed for the specialized vaccines.
The primary issue appears to be financial as the technology transfer required to establish operations in countries like South Africa would cut into profits. This is slowly changing as companies like Pfizer have announced limited manufacturing partnerships around the world. But there is a long way to go. In one example this year, vaccines produced in South Africa by Johnson & Johnson were being exported to European nations as reserves.
Expanding vaccine manufacturing
Slowing down the appearance of new variants and getting a handle on the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t technically complicated since we know what steps need to be taken. Vaccination efforts in developing markets need to be ramped up significantly, and the best way to help this effort is to expand vaccine manufacturing to more countries.
If western countries and pharmaceutical companies are unwilling to take these steps, new variants such as omicron will continue to leap onto the international scene and jeopardize global efforts to contain the virus.
With its quick discovery of the omicron variant, South Africa has proven to be a vital partner in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of prematurely isolating the country, the international community should use this event to engage South Africa more fully and establish a new base of vaccine manufacturing for Africa in the country.
No country or group of countries can fight this pandemic by itself, and no number of travel bans will ultimately prevent the virus from moving around the world. More than ever, we need to embrace the spirit of cooperation to ensure that we can put the pandemic behind us.
Joseph Dana is the senior editor of Exponential View, a weekly newsletter about technology and its impact on society.
Source: Syndication Bureau//Gulf News
