Global vaccine equity is key to ending COVID-19 pandemic

If not enough countries will band together and commit to vaccine equity, COVID-19 will continue to evolve and humanity may be con-signed to a never-ending pandemic.

It’s a race against time. While the first generation of vaccines has demonstrated high levels of efficacy, these need to be distributed as widely as possible to preempt the intrusion of more resistant variants.

As vaccines are being rolled out, new robust variants of the novel coronavirus — from the United Kingdom, South Africa, Brazil and India continue to mutate — and trigger devastating surges similar to what struck India recently. It is imperative to get vaccines jabbed in as many people's arms in as many countries to preempt further serious outbreaks.

“Vaccine hoarding” has been denounced in view of the apparent concentration of supplies in the United States and Europe where the breakthrough vaccines were developed and first rolled out.