Three vaccine holdouts imperil the world

While the world scrambles to secure Covid-19 vaccines, three African countries have done nothing to procure them.

Some nations such as Burkina Faso and Chad have yet to vaccinate any of their citizens, and other countries including Turkmenistan and North Korea have been slow to do so. But at least they have accepted the need for inoculations.

Tanzania, Burundi and Eritrea so far haven’t even done that.

That’s not just a threat to the 75 million people who live in those countries. It’s also a threat to the world.

If the virus is allowed to continue to circulate in pockets of population anywhere, it’s likely to mutate. When people travel, they carry it with them, and those mutations can sometimes evade antibodies produced in reaction to vaccines more easily than earlier versions of the virus.

Already, tests on travelers from Tanzania who arrived in Angola have found what South African genome-sequencing institute Krisp described as the most mutated variant yet.

Highly infectious strains first identified in other parts of the world, including South Africa and India, have rapidly spread across the globe, disrupting travel and threatening the efficacy of vaccine programs.

“This virus views antibodies as bait. It sees them and it transforms,” Patrick Soon-Shiong, a U.S. biotech billionaire developing a Covid-19 vaccine, said in an interview with Bloomberg.

Both Tanzania and Burundi had presidents, John Magufuli and Pierre Nkurunziza, who died in the last year of what was speculated to be Covid-19.

While Burundi’s new president, Evariste Ndayishimiye, declared the virus the country’s “biggest enemy” last year, he has yet to act on getting vaccines for his people. Tanzania President Samia Suluhu Hassan has promised a change in approach, but she is yet to take concrete action. Her nation hasn’t released infection statistics for a year. Eritrea has been silent.

As Phionah Atuhebwe, the World Health Organization’s new vaccines introduction medical officer for Africa, says, “We can only continue with advocacy.”

And in the meantime, the rest of the world pays the price.—Antony Sguazzin, BloombergQuint