Having just read a recent report by the American Centre for Strategic and International Affairs, it became clearly evident that the U.S. helping to secure the future of lower- and middle-income countries is simply the right thing to do, on humanitarian, economic, and security grounds. This means taking a clear lead on helping to provide supplies of COVID vaccines to vulnerable poorer countries in Africa and the Americas. The facts are that the U.S. has already purchased 1.3 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines from six companies, enough to vaccinate 650 million people — nearly twice the U.S. population. Meanwhile, recent reports say 300 million vaccine doses could be in the U.S. by July of this year, sparking hoarding worries.
The Biden administration is apparently leaning toward keeping the doses it has ordered, and then at some point directing the excess to other nations in either bilateral deals or giving it to Covax. Covax is an international nonprofit organization backed by the World Health Organization (WHO) that is trying to coordinate equitable distribution of vaccine among vulnerable countries. The Biden administration has already donated $3.5 billion for the Global Fund in support of the international effort. The recent passed American Rescue Plan also included a further $11 billion to support the global Covid-19 response, $3 billion for U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), $650 million for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) global Covid-19 response, and $300 million for the Center for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovation (CEPI). An excellent start to help combat the global pandemic.
However, the Centre for Strategic and International Affairs strongly suggests that the U.S. bring considerable leverage to any global strategy on vaccines. It is after all the biggest vaccine market and the largest investor in vaccines, with the deepest impact on research and development of new products. In addition, the Centre’s report suggests that the U.S. should work with multilateral efforts to create fiscal space in lower- and middle-income countries to invest in their health infrastructure, which will be essential for responding to the current crisis as well as making investments in future pandemic preparedness. It’s one thing to supply vaccines, it’s another to actually deliver and immunize a population affected by difficult regional transportation and few local health care capacities. These multilateral investments must continue into the future if vulnerable countries are to control future outbreaks and protect the health of their citizens.
We have already seen the foreign policy moves by China and Russia to supply vaccines strategically to vulnerable countries as an additional means of exerting their political and economic influence in the Americas, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Western countries, led by the U.S., cannot afford to ignore such vaccine supply initiatives underway in these strategic regions. Furthermore, millions of lives are at stake given the current increasing spread of COVID variants in these regions. The global response to this pandemic must be met through an international approach to be successful. Who else is in a better position to lead this response than the United States?
FROLITICKS 