India’s second wave of COVID-19 is hitting like a tsunami. With it comes a warning for getting vaccine diplomacy right. India and the United States have taken opposite approaches, and both have got it wrong.
Vaccine-producing countries practice vaccine diplomacy when they export vaccine to help other countries. The opposite is vaccine nationalism — keeping vaccine at home to help themselves.
India is the world’s biggest vaccine producer, but its government prioritized using its vaccine as a foreign policy tool to enhance its global status and build influence with other countries. India has exported more than 60 million doses to more than 80 countries so far, while fully vaccinating less than 2% of its own population.
India’s low vaccination rate results from several factors. Free vaccination was limited, with much of the distribution going through private clinics charging a fee. India was slow to open eligibility and invested little in public education and vaccine promotion. Prime Minister Narendra Modi downplayed the pandemic’s seriousness at home, with his political party holding massive rallies as recently as March and April, even as the second wave ticked up. Huge religious festivals were also permitted without masking or distancing protocols in place.
India is an essential player in efforts to control the pandemic globally, but it’s of little use to the world while collapsing under the weight of its own crisis at home.
In contrast, the U.S. approach could best be described as America First, focusing entirely on helping itself before helping others. This approach could easily backfire, though. If we rush to vaccinate our entire population against existing variants but allow a new variant to emerge elsewhere that our vaccines can’t beat, our selfish focus would have accomplished little.
________
The Chicago Tribune opinion section publishes op-eds from readers and experts about specific issues of the day. Op-eds reflect the views of the writer and not necessarily the Chicago Tribune.
________
The United States is one of a handful of wealthy countries, representing 16% of the global population, that have cornered more than half the global vaccine supply so far.
Domestically, the vaccination push is working for now. Nearly one-third of the entire U.S. population is fully vaccinated. New case rates have dropped significantly since January, from more than 200,000 a day to fewer than 40,000, and deaths from 4,000 a day to around 700.
Ultimately the U.S. will need to vaccinate children and offer booster shots. But now, as supply begins to outpace demand, the U.S. is overdue to pitch in globally, not out of altruism but for our own economic, national and health security too.
Viruses don’t respect borders and neither do their knock-on effects. An uncontrolled outbreak in a country of 1.4 billion people is a crisis for all. It impedes the global economic rebound, harming businesses and consumers here at home, and it risks the development of vaccine-resistant variants that would be a rude wake-up call to every country who sees recovery in view.
India, after all, had declared success. Its health minister announced that India had reached the pandemic’s endgame only weeks before it was the first to record more than 400,000 new cases in a single day. Confirmed deaths average 3,300 daily, though the real toll is likely much higher.
So what is the right balance between vaccine nationalism and vaccine diplomacy?
The most equitable approach would require wealthy countries to prioritize the world’s most vulnerable over its own younger, healthy populations at less risk of severe disease or death. That would mean that the United States should have started sending vaccine doses elsewhere before vaccinating less vulnerable groups at home. But that approach is politically untenable in wealthy countries where the government is accountable to voters.
A responsible middle ground is needed — one that recognizes a government’s first obligation is to its citizens but also factors in the interest all countries have in getting the pandemic under control everywhere. At a certain point, there is more value in sharing available vaccine than hoarding it at home. The United States passed that point likely over a month ago once more than half of our most vulnerable had received doses. Instead, the U.S. has vaccines in stock it can’t even use, including millions of AstraZeneca doses that are not approved yet for use here.
Pressure from the crisis in India has led the Biden administration to agree to share up to 60 million doses of AstraZeneca with other countries in the coming months, and on Wednesday, the Biden administration voiced support for waiving patent rights for COVID-19 vaccines to increase production.
This is a welcome change but won’t be enough. By July, the United States is on schedule to have 200 to 300 million more vaccine doses than it can use. We must do more, for global health and security, as well as our own at home.
With excess in the pipeline, the U.S. should immediately start redirecting a significant portion of our incoming vaccine doses to countries in greater need now, whether through COVAX, the global coalition to allocate vaccine, through bilateral agreements or a combination of the two. COVAX is the best hope for most poor countries, with a goal of reaching the most vulnerable 20% in every country in need. It has delivered about 38.4 million doses to 102 countries so far. To get the virus under control, the world needs billions.
If America is back, as the Biden administration likes to say, it’s time it took a leadership role in this global health crisis. By routing the potential of a vaccine-resistant variant, the lives we save could be our own.
Elizabeth Shackelford is a senior fellow on U.S. foreign policy with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. She was a U.S. diplomat until December 2017 and is the author of “The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age,” published in May 2020.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.
Get our latest editorials, op-eds and columns, delivered twice a week in our Fighting Words newsletter. Sign up here.
