Amnesty condemns rich world's 'near-monopoly' on COVID-19 vaccines
LONDON, United Kingdom — Richer countries are failing a "rudimentary" test of global solidarity by hoarding Covid vaccines, Amnesty International said Wednesday as it accused China and others of exploiting the pandemic to undermine human rights.
In its annual report, the campaigning rights organisation said the health crisis had exposed "broken" policies and that cooperation was the only way forward.
"The pandemic has cast a harsh light on the world's inability to cooperate effectively and equitably," said Agnes Callamard, who was appointed Amnesty's secretary general last month.
"The richest countries have effected a near-monopoly of the world's supply of vaccines, leaving countries with the fewest resources to face the worst health and human rights outcomes."
Amnesty strongly criticised the decision by former US president Donald Trump to withdraw Washington from the World Health Organization (WHO) in the midst of the pandemic — a step now reversed by Trump's successor Joe Biden.
Callamard called for an immediate acceleration of the global vaccine rollout, calling the innoculation campaign "a most fundamental, even rudimentary, test of the world's capacity for cooperation".
Widening inequality
Since the coronavirus emerged in China in late 2019, the pandemic has claimed more than 2.8 million lives globally and infected at least 130 million people.
Despite regular calls for global solidarity from international organisations, figures show widening inequality in access to vaccines.
According to an AFP count, more than half the 680 million-plus doses administered worldwide have been in high-income countries, such as the United States, Britain and Israel, while the poorest have received only 0.1 percent of the doses.
At the end of March, the WHO warned of an increasingly unbalanced distribution of vaccines.
Amnesty International has supported initiatives such as the WHO's vaccine exchange platform C-TAP to share know-how, intellectual property and data.
The under-used initiative could be used to build production capacity and additional vaccine production sites, particularly in Africa, Asia and Latin America, according to the WHO.
Amnesty dismissed as "paltry half-measures" decisions like those of the G20 group of nations to suspend debt repayments for 77 nations.
Chinese 'irresponsibility'
Amnesty also hit out at the "gross irresponsibility" of China during the pandemic, accusing Beijing of censoring health workers and journalists who tried to sound the alarm at the start of the outbreak.
"Covid-19 intensified a crackdown on freedom of expression with a number of citizen journalists who reported on the outbreak going missing, and in some cases being imprisoned," it said.
The rights group pointed to growing evidence of "grave human rights violations" more broadly in China, "including torture and enforced disappearances" of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the region of Xinjiang.
It said nations like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Hungary had used the pandemic to further silence criticism and cited violence by the security services in Brazil and Nigeria against protest movements in the past year.
"Some (leaders) have tried to normalise the overbearing emergency measures they’ve ushered in to combat Covid-19, whilst a particularly virulent strain of leader has gone a step further," Callamard said.
"They have seen this as an opportunity to entrench their own power. Instead of supporting and protecting people, they have simply weaponised the pandemic to wreak havoc on people's rights," she added.
Amnesty said during the health emergency, groups like women and migrants had been further marginalised in parts of the world.
It said its report outlined how "existing inequalities as a result of decades of toxic leadership have left ethnic minorities, refugees, older persons, and women disproportionately negatively affected".
"We face a world in disarray. At this point in the pandemic, even the most deluded leaders would struggle to deny that our social, economic and political systems are broken," Callamard said.
Pharma giants Sanofi and GSK said on July 29, 2020, that they have agreed to supply Britain with up to 60 million doses of a potential COVID-19 vaccine. The agreement covers a vaccine candidate developed by France's Sanofi in partnership with the UK's GSK and is subject to a "final contract."
This thread collects some of the major developments in the search for a vaccine to ease the new coronavirus pandemic. (Main photo by AFP/Joel Saget)
As negotiations towards a new pandemic treaty pick up pace, observers warn of watered-down efforts to ensure equitable access to the medical products needed to battle future Covid-like threats.
Shaken by the pandemic, the World Health Organization's 194 member states are negotiating an international accord aimed at ensuring countries are better equipped to deal with the next catastrophe, or even prevent it altogether.
The process is still in the early stages, with the aim of reaching an agreement by May 2024.
But critics warn that revisions being made to the preliminary negotiating text are weakening the language -- notably in a key area aimed at preventing the rampant inequity seen in access to vaccines and other medical products during the Covid pandemic.
"I think it is a real step backwards," Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute, told AFP. — AFP
Africa's first mRNA vaccine hub is ceremonially launched on Thursday to acclaim from the UN's global health chief, who hailed it as a historic shift to help poor countries gain access to life-saving jabs.
The facility was set up in the South African city of Cape Town in 2021 on the back of the success of revolutionary anti-Covid vaccines introduced by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.
"This precious project... will bring a paradigm shift in addressing the serious problem we faced, the equity problem, during the pandemic, so (that) it's not repeated again," World Health Organization (WHO) head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tells a media briefing to mark the inauguration. — AFP
China has approved its first locally developed messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine against Covid-19, its manufacturer said Wednesday, months after the relaxation of strict Covid-zero regulations sparked a surge in cases.
The vaccine, developed by CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd, has been approved for "emergency use" by Beijing's health regulator, the company said in a statement.
It showed high efficacy in a trial in which it was used as a booster shot for people who have been given other types of vaccines, the company added, without offering further details. — AFP
COVID-19 vaccine maker Novavax raises doubts about its ability to continue its business, announcing plans to cut spending after struggles in rolling out its coronavirus jab.
Shares of Novavax plummeted 25 percent in extended trading, after the company reported fourth-quarter earnings that missed analyst estimates.
While the firm should have enough money to fund operations, the situation is "subject to significant uncertainty," it says in a statement. — AFP
The protection against Covid-19 from being previously infected lasts at least as long as that offered by vaccination, one of the largest studies conducted on the subject says.
Ten months after getting Covid, people still had an 88% lower risk of reinfection, hospitalisation and death, according to the study published in the Lancet journal.
That makes this natural immunity "at least as durable, if not more so" than two doses of Pfizer or Moderna's vaccines, the study says.
The authors nevertheless emphasized that their findings should not discourage vaccination, which remains the safest way to get immunity. — AFP
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