According to the White House, millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines currently in warehouses in the United States are destined for vaccination sites in Mexico and Canada. The donation marks one of the United States’ first steps into the early – and deeply contentious – world of advanced pandemic vaccine diplomacy.
The neighborhood gesture is supposedly a loan – the United States hopes to return the favor and deliver some doses of vaccine in the future. The United States can certainly afford to be generous with these doses. The AstraZeneca vaccine you are donating has not been authorized in the United States. The country reserved doses just in case eventually gets the green light from the FDA, but the vaccine is still being tested in the United States. The results of this test are expected soon, but functionally, the US has a lot of doses that cannot do anything.
But other countries can. Many places have given AstraZeneca everything clean, including Canada and Mexico. And the United States has organized enough authorized vaccines to inoculate the entire population of the United States. This left many people lobbying the Biden government for the doses to go to countries that need them. Now, it seems, they will finally do just that.
(Quick aside: complicating everything, there is a mess with the launch of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Europe – some strange blood clotting has appeared in some patients, causing several countries to stop vaccinations. Vaccinations were resumed this week, with several regulators – and AstraZeneca – insisting that the vaccine is safe.)
The few million doses delivered to Mexico and Canada are a start. But on the global stage, the US is a little late for the party when it comes to vaccine donation. China, India and Russia, among others, have been promoting this specific version of soft power for some time. India, which has a large pharmaceutical manufacturing industry, is in a privileged position to donate vaccines to other countries. The UAE is struggling to become a major vaccine center in the Middle East, both by purchasing and distributing vaccines. China and Russia have developed their own vaccines and are using them to strengthen alliances around the world. So now you have several countries pushing their own vaccine supplies (and their own national agendas) to countries that cannot negotiate their own agreements with a limited number of manufacturers.
Then there is COVAX. COVAX is a vaccine distribution effort carried out by international organizations, including the World Health Organization. Its goal is to ensure that the poorest countries also have access to COVID-19 vaccines. So far, it has sold about 30 million vaccines worldwide. This is nothing but a small fraction of the more than 420 million doses of vaccines administered worldwide. And it is well below the goal of COVAX to administer more than a billion doses to poorer countries by the end of this year.
This came out of COVAX very angry in all bilateral negotiations going on between countries and between countries and pharmaceutical companies.
“We made great progress,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in February. “But this progress is fragile. We need to speed up the supply and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, and we cannot do that if some countries continue to approach manufacturers that are producing vaccines that COVAX is counting on. These actions harm COVAX and deprive health professionals and vulnerable people around the world of life-saving vaccines ”.
Biden pledged $ 4 billion to COVAX, but international pressure is growing more and more for rich countries like the United States to place their doses where their wallets are.
“From the point of view of the United States, we are losing a little bit of the messaging war out there,” said Krishna Udayakumar, director of the Center for Global Health Innovation at Duke University. Axios last month. “If we look at it six months from now, it could very well be that the United States donated more doses than any other country in the world. But now the story is how we are buying more and accumulating more supplies ”.
The United States appears to be trying to change that story – but it is still pursuing its own diplomatic path to get there. In March, President Biden met with leaders from Australia, Japan and India on a plan to increase vaccine production and flood countries in Asia and the Pacific with vaccines this year. At the same time, there is internal pressure for the United States government to quickly distribute the vaccines it has to its own population, which, due to the Trump administration’s own failure with the pandemic, has suffered the highest official death toll in any country in the world. world .
As the implementation continues, all of this will continue to happen. Countries will try to vaccinate people on their borders and, at the same time, will try to make the most of donations to the rest of the world. For now, it is a confusing political problem that is being linked to other international negotiations. But when all this is over and the vaccine bottles are empty, the nations of the world will be left with the way they have treated other human beings – whether they have held a safety blanket for extra doses or given part of their reward to a needy neighbor.
Here’s what else happened this week.
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Scientists needed help against COVID-19. They asked for sports.
“This was a year in which professional athletes were the biggest, tallest, strongest and fastest lab rats in the world.” A fascinating look at how sports leagues partnered with scientists during the pandemic. (Ben Cohen, Louise Radnofsky and Andrew Beaton / Wall Street Newspaper)
Coronavirus reinfections are rare, Danish researchers report
The results of a Danish study found that reinfections were rare, but outside experts wanted more information about an age group in the study that seemed most vulnerable – people over 65. (Supports Mandivall / The New York Times)
How much should we really care about coronavirus variants?
An accessible guide to frequently asked questions about coronavirus variants. (Anna Nowogrodzki / Slate)
Main variant of coronavirus found in pets for the first time
Pets, especially dogs and cats, can also obtain COVID-19. Now, it looks like they can also capture some of the variants of the COVID-19. (David Grimm / Science)
Development
“It is a very special photo.” Why vaccine safety experts brake AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine
Unusual cases of strange blood clots alarmed specialists in Europe last week. There were not many cases and there was no clear link to the vaccine that the patients had received, but they were alarmed – here’s why. (Gretchen Vogel, Kai Kupferschmidt / Science)
What the hell is going on with the AstraZeneca vaccine in Europe?
After these blood clots were found, some countries in Europe temporarily stopped vaccinating people. Then, regulators came out and said the vaccine was safe. Since then, many countries have resumed vaccination, but the situation remains complex. (Umair Irfan / Vox)
You are not fully vaccinated on the day of your last dose
Just a reminder – people are not considered fully vaccinated until two weeks after the final dose. Please plan accordingly. (Katherine Wu / The Atlantic)
Perspectives
Fate has taken me to a mysterious place in the past nine months: isolation. At a time in my life when I should have been branching out, the COVID pandemic seems to have trimmed those branches into lumps. I had to search for colleges without stepping on them. I introduced myself to strangers through rehearsals, videos and test notes.
—Gracie Yong Ying Silides, a senior in high school, wrote about her experience last year in a college newsroom, extracted from The New York Times.
More than numbers
To the more than 420 million people who have been vaccinated – thank you.
For the more than 122,101,187 people around the world who test positive, may their path to recovery be smooth.
To the family and friends of the 2,696,513 people who died worldwide – 540,950 of them in the United States – their loved ones will not be forgotten.
Be safe, everyone.