By Stephen Brown : The McLeod Group : 15-07-2021.<\/p>\n
Canada\u2019s recent\u00a0announcement<\/a>\u00a0that it would donate 17.7\u00a0million doses of vaccines to the global fight against COVID-19 is to be applauded. But don\u2019t clap too loud. We weren\u2019t ever going to use them anyway. For all of its rhetoric on global vaccine equity, the Canadian government could be doing far more to help combat the pandemic.<\/p>\n Positive but insufficient steps<\/em><\/p>\n The millions of vaccines being made available by Canada are all from AstraZeneca, which Canada no longer administers as first doses and only in exceptional cases as second doses. They are still highly effective vaccines and will be of tremendous use to the countries that receive them. Still, it will be noticed abroad that we are only giving away vaccines that would not going to wind up in Canadian arms anyway. How much credit do we expect for that? What else were we going to do with them, throw them out, like we are currently doing with the tens of thousands of AstraZeneca doses that sit in fridges until they\u00a0expire<\/a>?<\/p>\n The announcement also includes an initiative to match donations made by ordinary citizens to UNICEF Canada\u2019s \u201cGive a Vax<\/a>\u201d campaign. The latter is supporting vaccination efforts around the world. The government will double the contributions that Canadians make until September 6, up to a maximum of $10\u00a0million.<\/p>\n Again, this initiative will no doubt make a positive contribution. But the matching-funds mechanism is \u201ca bad idea<\/a>\u201d. It is needlessly bureaucratic, hinders planning and slows the process down. Global Affairs Canada has already set aside $10\u00a0million for this purpose. Why wait until September 7 to determine how much it will contribute to the UNICEF campaign? If it is worthwhile, just give UNICEF the $10\u00a0million now. With the Delta variant spreading around the world, the funds are urgently needed \u2013 right away, not in two months\u2019 time.<\/p>\n What more should Canada do?<\/em><\/p>\n First, the Canadian government should ramp up its in-kind donation of vaccines. Within a month, Canada will have more than enough vaccines to double-vaccinate its entire eligible population. So why aren\u2019t we also donating the top-rated vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna?<\/p>\n It appears the government wants to stockpile them, just in case we need some more later for booster shots. With a fall election widely\u00a0expected<\/a>, the Trudeau government seems to be staking its re-election hopes at least in part on its handling of the vaccine rollout and is therefore understandably cautious. No doubt, the opposition parties, the provinces and the media (to their discredit) would raise a stink if we ever had to slow down domestic vaccination even slightly because of doses donated to countries that needed them more urgently.<\/p>\n The government has signed contracts for 10 doses per Canadian, by far the highest level of\u00a0vaccine nationalism<\/a>\u00a0in the world. Canada and a small number of other wealthy countries have cleared the shelves of available vaccines, leaving COVAX \u2013 the multilateral initiative that promotes vaccine access and equity \u2013 not only short of money but also of doses to spend it on. In the\u00a0words<\/a>\u00a0of one participant in the design of the COVAX mechanism, \u201cRich countries behaved worse than anyone\u2019s worst nightmares\u201d.<\/p>\n We currently only need two doses per Canadian, three if one counts a booster shot (which may not be required for quite some time). So what is preventing Canada from committing to donating the more than 200\u00a0million doses that we won\u2019t need? Even if they are not currently in stock, the government could make a firm promise and set up a timetable for delivery.<\/p>\n Second, Canada should take additional steps to facilitate the manufacturing of COVID vaccines in countries in all regions of the world. Much more needs to be done to build the necessary infrastructure but also, equally important, to share formulas, know-how, techniques and ingredients.<\/p>\n Key for the expansion of the global supply of vaccines is flexibility on intellectual property rights, including patents. In health emergencies, such as the current one, Canadian and international law provide for a range of measures that would help put people\u2019s lives ahead of profits. Yet Canada is hedging.<\/p>\n Even after President Joe Biden\u00a0expressed<\/a>\u00a0the US government\u2019s support for a temporary waiver on COVID vaccine patents, proposed by India and South Africa last year under the World Trade Organization\u2019s (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Canada is refusing to back the initiative. Despite the urgency of action, Canada keeps stalling.<\/p>\n Similarly, the WTO has\u00a0endorsed<\/a>\u00a0the production of a generic version of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine by Biolyse, a Canadian company. In May, Bolivia placed an order for 15\u00a0million doses. Two months later, the Canadian government has yet to make a decision on whether or not to approve the deal under the\u00a0Canadian Access to Medicines Regime<\/a>.<\/p>\n The window is closing<\/em><\/p>\n At the rhetorical level, the Canadian government has emphasized the importance of equitable access to COVID vaccines around the world. It has also often repeated how the pandemic won\u2019t be over until it is over everywhere. It has taken some important steps to fund vaccination abroad, which is the only realistic scenario for exiting the global pandemic. But Canada is dragging its feet and many of its efforts \u2013 including the latest announcements \u2013 are timid, late and vastly insufficient. Moreover, vaccine equity requires more than the occasional charitable donation.<\/p>\n Canada\u2019s international reputation has suffered because of its record-breaking vaccine stockpiling. If the government wants to boost its international image, there are significant concrete measures it could take almost overnight, including some at little or no monetary cost. But the Canadian government needs to hurry. The window of opportunity is closing. Otherwise, in the coming years, when the story of COVID vaccines is told, Canada may find itself stuck in the villain\u2019s role.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Stephen Brown : The McLeod Group : 15-07-2021. Canada\u2019s recent\u00a0announcement\u00a0that it would donate 17.7\u00a0million doses of vaccines to the global fight against COVID-19 is to be applauded. But don\u2019t clap too loud. We weren\u2019t ever going to use them anyway. For all of its rhetoric on global vaccine equity, the Canadian government could be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1520,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-development-actors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1522,"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519\/revisions\/1522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rise-global.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}