According to Our World in Data, by this past April 29th, only about 7.55% of the world’s population had received at least one dose of any vaccine against Covid-19. In a perfect world, every country would have the same amount of vaccines to cover a percentage of their population; however, this is not the case as the 27 wealthiest countries account for 36.4% of the vaccinations while only having 10.5% of the world’s population.
But why does this make a difference? Surely this means that developing countries will ultimately have more deaths and a longer path to recover as a nation, but this won’t make a difference to everyone, right? Well, not completely….
As we already know, viruses are constantly mutating. Because of this, vaccine companies like Pfizer have already stated that a third dose might be necessary in order to continue to be effective against new variants of the virus. Recently, we’ve seen new variants popping up in places such as South Africa and Brazil, and raging all over South America and Africa, even after some countries closed their borders.
While this was partly the result of inaction from governments and perhaps figures such as Bolzonaro (Brazil’s former Health Minister), the fact that the prosperous countries controlling most of the vaccines aren’t helping these areas, now experiencing a higher density of non-vaccinated citizens, is unfortunate, as it could perhaps stop the quick spreading of Covid-19 and its new variants.
During the current pandemic, we’ve already seen the actions of the 1st world affect developing nations badly.
Take Peru for example.
Although a quarantine was first announced in 2020 for two weeks (at the time), starting on March 16th as sick passengers arrived (coming countries in Europe and the US that failed to act quickly), cases kept rising more and more, as people couldn’t afford to stay home due to the country’s informality and poverty levels. The result was the 4th highest mortality rate worldwide (John Hopkins), and a collapsed health system and financial devastation for those most vulnerable.
In short, traditional methods that, in theory, should’ve kept the virus under control didn’t because of the previous state of the country.
As a result of this, it is prime to note that we; humanity will not contain Covid-19 until vaccines are equally available for everyone. If not, we risk more mutations. And even if borders are closed, this potentially airborne virus will still be able to travel by land or air and sooner or later will come to haunt every nation. While we don’t live in a perfect world, if we ever want to move forward from this point, more vulnerable and developing countries must not be left behind for the good of everyone.
Ximena. N
Works Cited:
"Confinamiento Por La Pandemia De COVID-19 En Perú". Wikipedia, 2021, https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confinamiento_por_la_pandemia_de_COVID-19_en_Per%C3%BA. Accessed 29 Apr 2021.
"Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations". Our World In Data, 2021, https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=~PER. Accessed 30 Apr 2021.
"More Than 1.13 Billion Shots Given: Covid-19 Tracker". Bloomberg, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/. Accessed 30 Apr 2021.
"Mortality Analyses". Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality. Accessed 30 Apr 2021.
Our World in Data. Vaccination World Map Until February 1St, 2021. 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-56025355. Accessed 29 Apr 2021.
"Science Brief: SARS-Cov-2 And Potential Airborne Transmission". Centers For Disease Control And Prevention, 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/scientific-brief-sars-cov-2.html. Accessed 29 Apr 2021.
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