Experts warn failure to ‘vaccinate the world’ quickly creates dangerous opening for Covid-19 mutations

Epidemiologists in dozens of countries around the world issued a strong warning on Tuesday that failure to ensure global delivery of Covid-19 vaccines within the next year – at the latest – could allow resistant variants vaccines from spreading among unprotected populations to such an extent that current plans are rendered ineffective.

According to a new People’s Vaccine Alliance survey of 77 leading epidemiologists from 28 countries, two-thirds believe the international community has “a year or less” before Covid-19 mutations proliferate enough to make the disease majority of first generation vaccines ineffective. , requiring the production of new or modified projectiles – an opportunity that the pharmaceutical industry is already preparing to seize.

“Unless we vaccinate the world, we are leaving the playing field open to more and more mutations, which could produce variants that could escape our current vaccines and require booster shots to treat them.
—Gregg Gonsalves, Yale University

Almost a third of the experts surveyed said the most precise timeframe for this alarming scenario is probably nine months or less.

More than 80% of survey respondents agreed that “the persistent low immunization coverage in many countries would make the emergence of vaccine-resistant mutations more likely”, stressing the importance of global production and rapid distribution of the vaccine. highly effective existing vaccines.

“With millions of people around the world infected with this virus, new mutations are occurring every day,” said Gregg Gonsalves, associate professor of epidemiology at Yale University. “Sometimes they find a niche that makes them more apt than their predecessors. These lucky variants could transmit more efficiently and potentially elude immune responses to previous strains.”

“Unless we vaccinate the world,” Gonsalves warned, “we’re leaving the playing field open to more and more mutations, which could produce variants that could escape our current vaccines and require booster shots to do so. face”.

Quarraisha Abdool Karim, associate scientific director of CAPRISA and professor of clinical epidemiology at Columbia University, echoed Gonsalves’ assessment, saying in a statement that the potential of Covid-19 variants to reduce the progress of vaccination is another example of “our interdependence” in fighting a virus that ignores borders.

“High coverage rates and herd immunity in one country or region of the world while others, especially low- and middle-income countries, continue to queue, will create the ideal environment for the virus to continues to mutate and negates the benefits of any vaccine protection, ”said Karim. “On the other hand, there are huge benefits for everyone in having more equitable access to available vaccine doses.”

The severe warnings from experts came as President Joe Biden is reportedly considering whether or not to back U.S. support for a World Trade Organization effort to temporarily lift vaccine patent protection, a move that would end the control of the pharmaceutical industry over vaccine production and would allow a massive acceleration of production and distribution around the world.

The People’s Vaccine Alliance, a coalition of more than 50 international organizations, said Tuesday that if the current vaccination rate persists, it is “likely that only 10% of people in the majority of poor countries will be vaccinated next year.”

Experts have warned that if restrictive intellectual property rules that benefit the for-profit pharmaceutical industry are left in place, some developing countries may not gain sufficient access to vaccines until 2024.

While rich countries are currently inoculating their populations at an estimated rate of one person per second, the successful deployment of vaccines could be jeopardized by new, highly contagious variants that are developing and spreading among countries without access to vaccines. – and end up making their way into rich countries. A study published last week found that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is less effective against a strain of coronavirus that originated in South Africa and was detected in the United States.

“In many wealthy countries, people who are vaccinated are starting to feel more secure, but unless all nations are vaccinated there is a huge risk that the protection offered by vaccines will be shattered by further mutations,” said Anna Marriott, Health Policy Manager at Oxfam. “We need a popular vaccine, not only to protect people in the poorest countries of the world, but also to ensure that people around the world who have already been vaccinated are not put at risk again.” .