<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class=""><h1 class=" e-headline u-heading-1 article-comment__header" data-test="headline" itemprop="headline"><span style="font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;" class=""><a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/playing-whack-a-mole-variants-virus-winning/" class="">https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/playing-whack-a-mole-variants-virus-winning/</a> </span></h1><h1 class=" e-headline u-heading-1 article-comment__header" data-test="headline" itemprop="headline"> We are playing whack-a-mole with variants – and the virus is winning
</h1><p class="u-heading-4 e-standfirst" itemprop="description" data-test="standfirst"><b class="">
If we do not vaccinate the world, the pandemic won't end. More variants will emerge, millions more lives will be lost </b></p></div><div class=""><span class="e-byline-comment " data-test="byline"><span class="e-byline-comment__meta e-byline-comment__meta--multi" itemscope="" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemprop="author"><span class="e-byline-comment__details"><a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/m/ma-me/madhukar-pai/" itemprop="url" class="e-byline-comment__link " rel="author" aria-label="Madhukar Pai"><span class="e-byline-comment__author" itemprop="name" content="Madhukar Pai"></span>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<span class="e-byline-comment__meta e-byline-comment__meta--multi" itemscope="" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemprop="author">
<span class="e-byline-comment__details">
<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/m/ma-me/manu-prakash/" itemprop="url" class="e-byline-comment__link " rel="author" aria-label="Manu Prakash">
<span class="e-byline-comment__author" itemprop="name" content="Manu Prakash">Manu Prakash</span>
</a>
</span>
</span>
</span>
<time class="u-meta e-byline__date e-published-date" itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2022-01-04T15:42+0000" data-test="time">
4 January 2022 • 3:42pm </time></div><div class=""><p class="">As we begin year three of the Covid-19 pandemic, hunkering down again
to survive the viral blizzard that Omicron has brought, it is painfully
clear that we are failing to learn from the past. </p><p class="">Predictably, rich nations have made boosters and border controls
their primary response to the Omicron crisis, while vaccine apartheid,
the 800-pound gorilla in the room, is completely unaddressed. If we do
not <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn3081" rel="nofollow" class="">vaccinate the world</a>,
the pandemic won't end, more variants will emerge, and the world will
continue to lose millions of lives, along with trillions in economic
losses.</p><p class="">While some political leaders might claim that they “didn’t see
Omicron coming,” health experts have been shouting from the rooftops
about this. For months.</p><p class="">In April 2021, as the delta variant devastated India, causing millions of excess deaths, we had this warning in the <em class="">Washington Post</em>:
“We cannot just vaccinate rich countries and hope that we will be safe.
The only way to end this pandemic is to end it everywhere. Otherwise,
we will forever play whack-a-mole with a constantly mutating virus.”</p><p class="">In January 2022, we are still playing whack-a-mole with this virus.
One single infected individual can harbor anywhere from 1 billion to 100
billion viral particles during peak infection. And with infections now
running unchecked as is the case globally – any one of them has the
potential to accumulate mutations that allow it to not only evade
immunity but also spread at a mind-boggling rate – 2-4 times higher, as
is the case with Omicron. </p><p class="">And unfortunately, even with this as background, we still do not have
a global plan to end this crisis everywhere. On paper, we do. The G20
Rome Leader’s Declaration endorsed the WHO plan to vaccinate at least 70
per cent of people in all countries by mid-2022. But, in reality, we
are far away from achieving this goal, since mid-2022 is now just six
months away. And even 70 per cent global vaccine coverage might not be
sufficient to end the global crisis.</p><p class="">As of January 2022, more than <a href="https://pandem-ic.com/mapping-the-unvaccinated-world/" rel="nofollow" class="">3.3 billion</a>
people, mostly in low and middle-income countries, are still waiting
for their first vaccine dose, even as rich nations are rushing to
deliver booster doses to their populations. Whereas 76 per cent of
people in high-income countries have received at least one Covid-19
vaccine dose, as of 1 January 2022, the rate was only 8.5 per cent in
low-income countries.</p><p class="">Even after a full year of Covid vaccination globally, three in four
African healthcare workers remain unvaccinated. According to WHO, only
half of WHO Member States have reached the target to immunise 40 per
cent of their populations by the end of 2021.</p><p class="">While 80 per cent of high-income countries are offering boosters, 0
per cent of low-income countries are doing this. In fact, nearly six
times more boosters are administered daily than primary vaccine doses in
low-income countries.</p><p class="">This shameful vaccine inequity can only worsen with Omicron, since
every rich nation is rushing to buy up more vaccines for boosters – some
countries are already trialling fourth dose and even planning a sixth.
And if the definition of ‘fully vaccinated’ is now a series of three
doses in all, then full vaccine coverage in low-income countries is
effectively zero.</p><p class="">With the panic over Omicron, the ‘booster hunger games’ are now
forcing rich nations to make a dash for extra doses, and hoard vaccines
they already have, potentially slowing down their donations to COVAX. By
end of 2021, only about 27 per cent of the donation pledges have
actually shipped. </p><p class="">WHO has already warned that Omicron could spark new vaccine hoarding
by rich nations. Despite initial commitments from COVAX to ship two
billion doses by the end of 2021, only 1.4 billion doses were projected
to be available to COVAX by the end of 2021. </p><p class="">If we have any hopes of vaccinating the world, production and
distribution of vaccines must be dramatically increased. For that to
happen, rich nations must stop vaccine hoarding, urgently redistribute
surplus vaccines to meet their pledges to the COVAX, support the TRIPS
intellectual property waiver, and force pharmaceutical companies to
transfer know-how for diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics. </p><p class="">There are more than 100 companies that are capable of making mRNA
vaccines, if they are adequately supported. We need to think beyond the
Big Pharma model and support non-profits, state-run enterprises, and
universities to make life-saving products. The recent approval in India
of Corbevax, developed by scientists at Texas Children’s Hospital and
Baylor College of Medicine before it was licensed, with no patents or
strings attached, to Biological E. Limited (BioE) is a positive
exemplar.</p><p class="">Unlike 2021, it is important to remember that we begin 2022 with an
experience of the last two years and tools that work: vaccines
(especially mRNA vaccines), rapid antigen tests, KN95 and N95 masks, and
new anti-viral medicines such as Molnupiravir and Paxlovid (both were
recently US FDA approved). Unfortunately, currently these tools are
largely concentrated in rich nations, and inaccessible to large swathes
of the world’s population.</p><p class="">While sharing vaccines is critical, countries need more than that to
deal with the current surge of Omicron. Greater access to rapid antigen
tests, high-filtration face masks, and better therapeutic options are
urgently needed, as healthcare systems are already getting overwhelmed
with the sky-rocketing Omicron case counts. If healthcare systems in
Europe and North America are straining, we can only imagine the state of
fragile, under-resourced healthcare systems in low-income nations.</p><p class="">In summary, science has delivered many tools that work against
Covid-19. But equitable distribution of these tools is where we are
failing. If we can find a way to share effective tools equitably and <a href="https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/articles/covid19-vaccine-geographic-distribution" rel="nofollow" class="">increase their production across the world</a>,
then we have a real shot at ending this pandemic. If we hoard these
tools, block TRIPS waiver, and think we can boost our way out of this
pandemic in the global North, we will begin 2023 by playing whack-a-mole
with the rho, sigma, tau or Omega variants.</p>
<ul class=""><li class=""><em class="">Madhukar Pai is a professor of epidemiology and global
health at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Manu Prakash is an
associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University’s Center
for Innovation in Global Healt</em></li></ul><div class=""><br class=""></div></div><br class=""><div class="">
Arthur Stamoulis<br class="">Citizens Trade Campaign<br class="">(202) 494-8826<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">
</div>
<br class=""></body></html>