The London Post: Global vaccine distribution wasn’t fair

Ever since its early days, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a true test of multilateralism, exposing the cracks and weaknesses within the international system, Report informs referring to The London Post.

Throughout its development, certain aspects of the pandemic have been politicized, with some countries putting their nationalistic agendas above the collective health of the international community. Among the unfortunate tendencies ignited by the pandemic, the most recent and the most pressing one today is what has been referred to as ‘vaccine nationalism.’

Global vaccine distribution has been neither fair nor equal, with even developed countries quarreling amongst themselves about vaccines’ distribution.

During an international webinar titled ‘Geopolitics of COVID-19 pandemic and vaccination’ and hosted by Azerbaijan’s Center of Analysis of International Relations, Paulo Botta, president of the Centre for Contemporary Middle Eastern Studies (CEMOC) in Argentina, talked about the big need, limited offer and financial/political constraint of vaccines in Latin America.

While being over-represented in terms of deaths by COVID-19, Latin America is still at the early stage of vaccine implementation. During the same event, Cesar Edgardo Martinez Flores, Executive Director of the Center for Foreign Relations Studies (CEERES) in El Salvador, stated that ‘in public health and basic services we have failed as a society: with COVID-19 we saw the rebuilding of nationalism.’

Talking about the detrimental effects of vaccine nationalism on cooperation, Flores said how fighting against one another to get vaccinated first was only making the crisis worse and forcing its cycle to prevail.

The international edition says that unless international collaboration is strengthened in the vaccination program, the virus will continue to circulate, mutate, cause more preventable deaths and reduce global economic output. Considering this, it is less costly to join the fair vaccine distribution initiative and follow the motto of ‘No one is safe until everyone is.’