WORLD SUMMIT FOR A GLOBAL WAR AGAINST COVID-19 PANDEMIC

As nations rich and poor struggle to come out of the pandemic pit pinning their hopes on hurriedly tested vaccines approved only for emergency use, a clarion call comes from the United Nations Security Council.

- Ameen Izzadeen

The call comes with the shocking news about the vulgar disparity in the vaccine distribution. Global justice activists have cried foul over the unfair distribution and the over-purchasing of vaccines by certain rich nations, while the poor nations are left to their fate.

Addressing the Security Council on Wednesday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres hit out at the manner in which the vaccines were being distributed. Describing it as “wildly uneven and unfair”, he revealed that just 10 countries had administered 75 percent of all vaccinations, while some 130 countries had not received a single dose of vaccine yet. He then called for an urgent Global Vaccination Plan.

Emphasizing the urgent need for such a global plan, he warned, “If the virus is allowed to spread like wildfire in the Global South, it will mutate again and again. New variants could become more transmissible, more deadly and, potentially, threaten the effectiveness of current vaccines and diagnostics. This can prolong the pandemic significantly, enabling the virus to come back to plague the Global North.”

The secretary general’s statement is a welcome call, though the UN chief and the UN bureaucracy, in anticipation of the rich nations’ lunge to grab the vaccines, should have issued the call at the onset of the pandemic. Anyway, it’s better late than never.

Addressing the Security Council, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard denounced the “injustice” of what he called a “deepening gap” as wealthy countries “monopolize the vaccines.”