UN Secretary-General calls out accelerating 'vaccine nationalism', urges cooperation

UN Chief Antonio Guterres on December 9 warned that “vaccine nationalism” was moving at full speed leaving poor nations wondering if and when they will get vaccinated. His remarks come a day after Britain, a first-world nation, began the first phase of mass inoculation. However, the secretary-general asserted that vaccines should be treated as “global public goods” and be made available to all populations, especially across African territory.  

The COVID-19 pandemic, which emerged in December 2019 has spiralled to infect over 69,055,853 people across 191 countries, out of which 1,572,423 have died, the latest tally by the Baltimore based John Hopkins University revealed. As of now, Moderna, AstraZeneca/OxfordUniversity and Pfizer/BioNTech have declared their COVID-19 vaccine candidates successful. A lot of other pharma firms like France’s Sanofi and China’s Sinovac are conducting the final phase trials on their vaccine candidates.

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Contribute $4.2 billion to COVAX

Guterres urged global organisations to contribute $4.2 billion in the next two months for the World Health Organization’s COVAX program, an ambitious project to buy and deliver coronavirus vaccines for the world’s poorest people. Reiterating his claim, Guetteres said that financing COVAX was the only way to guarantee vaccines will be available in Africa and other developing areas. He also stressed that  ACT- which includes the COVAX project was in danger of becoming no more than a noble gesture without major new fundings.

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Meanwhile, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) started the convening of a special two-day session on the COVID-19 pandemic on December 10.  Vikas Swarup, who is Secretary (West) at the External Affairs Ministry, represented India at the special session. Heads of State and ministers, including French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga, German Chancellor Angela Merkel are some of the world leaders which are scheduled to the session.

(With inputs from AP)

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