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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wrote on Twitter: “We must get to work to make sure the vaccine is available to everyone, everywhere. With this pandemic, none of us are safe until all of us are safe.” But it is increasingly clear that we are wilfully failing to do so. Why? Because too many of the earth’s most powerful nations continue to put hording intellectual property rights ahead of the survival of tens of millions of people in many disadvantaged nations. The opinion below speaks to this moral failure. – David Thornley
“As the pandemic spills into its second year, the WHO tracker lists eight Covid-19 vaccines already in public use. Several others are awaiting regulatory approval. This is unprecedented in vaccine history and with effective international coordination … Instead, the world is on the brink of a ‘catastrophic moral failure’ on vaccine distribution, to use the words of WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Countries are mired in a stalemate of ‘vaccine nationalism’, with the rich world having secured contracts to vaccinate their entire populations thrice over by […] “
