The Omicron variant must serve as a wake-up call

Experts warned us: The problems of largely unvaccinated countries will eventually become our problems. It is illusory to fight a global pandemic by building protective bubbles here and there.

The Omicron variant, and its peak protein riddled with mutations, will it be the one to burst these bubbles? It is too early to tell. It will probably take a few weeks for scientists to fully understand whether the Omicron variant can bypass vaccination, and whether it is more contagious or more virulent than the currently dominant Delta variant.

But the fears it causes remind us of the extent of the risk to the planet, when 46% of its population has yet to receive any dose of vaccine against COVID-19 (the proportion exceeds 94% in countries considered to be “Low income” by the World Bank).

It is not known where the Omicron variant comes from (it may not even be from Africa). But nearly two years after the start of the pandemic, having large swathes of the world’s population still unvaccinated is as much an ethical failure as a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads.

Every unvaccinated human is at increased risk of becoming infected. And each infected person turns into a factory to replicate the COVID-19 virus. Over the course of the errors that occur at random from these multiplications, new forms of the virus emerge.

The huge vaccine disparity that still remains makes us realize the mistake we made by letting companies like Pfizer and Moderna sit on their patents, without forcing them to grant licenses and transfer their expertise to countries that wanted to manufacture the vaccine (like India and South Africa).

We also measure the tragic failure of COVAX, an international vaccine distribution mechanism that never took off because rich countries like Canada bypassed it by signing commercial agreements directly with vaccine manufacturers. And because countries like China have attached flags to the vials they sent to developing countries, turning aid into a diplomatic game.

All of this, of course, has been known for a long time. But it could fall on our noses with the Omicron variant. Or it will be with the next variant that will foil our vaccines.

The issue of vaccination in developing countries is complex and goes beyond the issue of production capacities. According to data from pharmaceutical companies, 9.3 billion doses had been manufactured by mid-October and are expected to cross the 12 billion mark by the end of the year. By mid-2022, we promise to have manufactured 24 billion.

But the challenge of getting these doses to the arms that need them remains immense. One of the reasons is that it is much easier (and profitable) for the Pfizers of this world to sell booster doses to developed countries than it is to sell first doses to people in low-income countries.

In Canada, for example, 10.7 million doses are currently waiting in freezers. Médecins sans frontières stresses that this is more than what the country has given through COVAX (8.3 million doses) and bilaterally (762,000 doses) since the start of the pandemic.

There are also all the logistical issues, including maintaining the cold chains. And the fact that in sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, COVID-19 is not causing the same stir as it is for us. In these regions where people are dying of malaria, diarrhea, HIV, tuberculosis, COVID-19 is just one more disease – and the less dramatic the younger the population and resists it better. Mobilization is difficult.

Vaccinating poor regions of the world is therefore a complex challenge, but one that is far from receiving the necessary attention. The Omicron variant reminds us that the time has come to seriously help these countries to vaccinate their populations. For them. And for us.