The coronavirus doesn't stop at a nation's borders.
 | By Alexandra Sifferlin Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
The big Covid-19 news in the United States is that vaccines for children aged 5 to 11 and boosters for certain groups like people over 65 may soon be on the way. This is a welcome update for anxious parents whose children have started school amid the spread of the Delta variant, and those who are worried that their own vaccine protection may be waning in the face of a dangerous and still ubiquitous virus. |
But for much of the world, the vaccine policy question isn't who should get a third shot, or when vaccines for young children will be authorized; many lower-income countries have not even begun to provide first doses of Covid-19 vaccines to their vulnerable populations, like frontline health workers and the elderly. |
As Jeneen Interlandi, my colleague and a member of the editorial board, writes in a new essay, the global distribution of Covid-19 vaccines has been "recklessly uneven." |
According to her reporting, the United States has bought enough shots to vaccinate its entire population three times over. Some estimates suggest that, at the current pace, it would take 57 years for low-income countries to vaccinate their entire populations while high-income countries could do so in the next six months. |
It's difficult to compare the needs of one country to that of another. The United States, as evidenced by overwhelmed hospitals in some regions, clearly still needs to vaccinate more of its population. But this question can't be figured out one nation at a time: that there are not enough vaccines to go around right now is a collective problem. |
President Biden is convening a summit today with global leaders to address how to vaccinate the world. As Jeneen outlines in her piece, the task will be a major undertaking. The number of companies and countries involved in vaccine production and distribution must increase. There are ways Biden could help lead the way, but it will require uncommon leadership, she says. |
Biden could allocate more U.S. spending toward the effort. He could also pull back, in the short-term, on booster shots and possibly vaccinations for children, until other countries have enough to provide their vulnerable populations with first doses (and encourage other wealthy nations to do the same). He could take a stronger stance in support of waiving vaccine patents held by pharmaceutical companies so that more countries can produce vaccines locally. He could also work with China, and possibly Russia, to validate their vaccines for broader use. |
"Building a truly global vaccination system will be an epic challenge and will almost certainly not result in a fresh abundance of vaccines in the immediate future," writes Jeneen. "But at some point, if they're serious about stopping this pandemic and preventing others, leaders will have to face those challenges. They might as well start now." |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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