Page 20 - November 2021 IB FINAL

Pacific Health Pacific Health

COVAX- AN OPPORTUNITY LOST

FAILURE TO ADOPT A GLOBAL, COORDINATED COVID-19
RESPONSE HAS COST DOLLARS AND LIVES

By Dan McGarry from it. In October, Health Minister Greg Hunt confirmed that
the government’s contract with vaccine manufacturer CSL
COVAX could have provided nations with a rallying point to would not be renewed.
promote international unity and cooperation. It could have The CCP’s mouthpiece Global Times brags that China has
put developing countries on even ground with the most ad- shipped over 750 million doses of its own vaccines overseas
vanced nations. It’s parent endeavour, the Access to COVID-19 this year, but failed to distinguish how many were sold and
Tools Accelerator (or ACT-A), could have eased access to vac- how many donated. Bridge Beijing, a health communications
cine patents and related technology, lowering costs, acceler- agency, puts doses donated at 99 million, as of November 8,
ating production and ending the pandemic faster than ever 2021.
before in world history. Some have argued that there is no difference between vac-
Instead, COVAX was not just ignored but thwarted by its cines delivered through the COVAX facility or independently
own member nations, who snapped up vaccines and scarce of it.
supplies in direct competition with the body. Failure to immediately back the COVAX facility led to a
A recent ABC News report indicates that COVAX has de- scaled-back rollout schedule for Vanuatu. Its original vac-
livered less than 25% of the number of doses it intended in cination plan, designed in late 2020, called for over half the
2021. This is largely due to slow fund-raising that allowed country to be vaccinated in 2023. This date was derived from
individual nations to jump ahead in the vaccine order queue. COVAX estimates of vaccine availability. These estimates were
This induced scarcity was compounded by developed nations’ based on supply commitments at the time, and a triage sys-
reluctance to drop patents and other intellectual property tem that prioritised countries with existing community trans-
protections that might have allowed production of essential mission. This would have had the perverse effect of penalising
materials in the developing world. the lucky few countries who’d managed to keep the virus out.
Instead of an egalitarian and fair distribution of vaccines The Lowy Institute’s Alexandre Dayant suggested on social
designed to eradicate the virus globally, we’re witnessing a media that other factors played into the delay in vaccinating
decidedly unequal patchwork of national efforts, effectively the poorest nations, citing ‘limited absorption capacity’. He
guaranteeing the virus will live long enough to mutate and suggested that more vaccination teams and a more robust
return with a vengeance. The human cost will be borne by the response to vaccine misinformation were the keys to success-
poorest nations. ful rollout.
Some have suggested that these shortfalls have been offset But Samoa, Tonga, Niue, the Cook Islands and Fiji have all
by the largesse of key manufacturing nations. The USA has demonstrated that, given the opportunity, they were capable
donated 200 million doses this year, according to Reuters. of vaccinating the vast majority of the population more
Most of the US-aligned northern Pacific island countries were quickly just as fast as Australia and others.
vaccinated solely with US-supplied medicines. The limiting factor in most cases has been the start date.
DFAT recently issued an update indicating that Australia has Vanuatu and Solomon Islands are outliers. It’s likely that
donated over 7 million doses, almost exclusively of domesti- their success in barring entry to the virus has bred compla-
cally produced AstraZeneca. About a quarter of those, 1.9 cence. But if they had started vaccinating at the same time as
million in total, were delivered to Pacific island countries. the USA, for example, even at their present sultry pace, they
would be much farther along today.
Instead, they’re in a race against time.
Most concerning of all is the lack of engagement in building
national capacity to live with the virus over time, as well as
future outbreaks. ACT-A has a mandate to equip countries not
only with vaccines, but with the means to keep populations
healthy in the mid-term. Donated vaccines do nothing to ad-
dress the underlying lack of capacity in Pacific health systems.
It can be argued that the abject failure of PNG’s public
health response to the pandemic is due to a chronic failure
to invest in it, creating a society which relied very little on
modern health services.
Blame for this falls squarely on the government of Papua
The donation was made easier, ironically, because mixed New Guinea, of course, but the failure to take advantage
messaging and muddled policy drove most Australians away of COVAX and ACT-A to address the shortfall lies squarely on

20 Islands Business, November 2021