No one I know has a New Year resolution that does not include making Covid history.
The latest scourge of Omicron takes us into the third year of seemingly, endless disease and death.
Yet, we now know Covid cycles of destruction can be broken by vaccination and testing.
But vaccination and testing have to happen everywhere if the virus is to be contained.
And to bring Covid under control, Boris Johnson and President Joe Biden should this week appoint a global coordinator.
Their task: to urgently transfer the vaccines and testing equipment that the richest countries currently monopolise to the poorest countries still without them. Only then can we halt the threat from new variants.
For even as the West has 70% adult vaccination. Ninety countries have yet to meet the worldwide (end of 2021) target- of 40%.
In low-income countries, the figure is still only 4%. In one African country Burundi, only one in every 2500 is vaccinated. Three out of every four African health workers have yet to receive their anti-Covid shots.
We’re failing because the richest countries continue to stockpile vaccine and medical supplies with the result that - even after all of us have boosters - there is a surplus in the richest countries and a shortage in the poorest.
Cooperation between rich and poor countries failed so badly in 2021 that 60m vaccines, that could have been sent from the global north to the global south, passed their ‘use by’ date and, instead of being sent southwards to prevent the spread and mutation of Covid, had to be destroyed.
I hate waste. So does the British public. Lives could have been saved by sending Africa the unused vaccines before they expired.
Quite simply, we are having to recreate Nightingale wards in the United Kingdom, to cope with possible emergency admissions here, because we have failed to halt the emergence and spread of the Omicron virus abroad.
And as long as we waste vaccines and can't test people in Africa and elsewhere, global medical experts are predicting 200 million further Covid cases for 2022.
Over five million lives have been lost to Covid already. Unless we get vaccines and testing equipment to the global unvaccinated, they anticipate it could lay waste to five million more lives in the months to come.
The longer we delay vaccinating the unprotected, the more likely the virus will keep mutating.
But with 1.4 billion vaccines being produced every month and nearly 20 billion by June, we have the capacity to vaccinate everyone in the world.
To control the disease also requires testing - and again, we have failed to honour our promises.
Only 1 in 250 of the Covid tests administered worldwide have been administered in low-income countries.
So, in 2022, to end the pandemic, we must stop the underfunding of vaccinations, testing and medical equipment needed in low-income countries.
President Biden will recall his Vaccine Summit in the first weeks of 2022.
On the agenda should be a ‘fair shares‘ agreemenT - with America and Europe guaranteeing more than half the $23.4billion cost of getting vaccines, testing and other medical equipment to the poorest countries.
Big international financial institutions, like the World Bank and the IMF, should be asked to come up with the cash needed to build in-country capacity to administer the vaccines staff the make-shift vaccination clinics help prevent future pandemics.
And if we need more cash to save lives, let's try some innovative ideas. France has raised $1.25 billion for global health since 2006 through its tax on airlines. $100 billion of the $650 billion in special drawing rights - new international money created by the IMF - could be quickly deployed to provide resources for poorer countries to buy the necessary medical supplies. The richer countries could leverage $2 billion of loan guarantees into $10 billion of additional resources for poorer countries.
During the financial crisis of 2009, we underpinned the world economy with $1.1 trillion of support. The medical price tag for 2022 is $60 billion, only a fraction of what was spent in 2009 and certainly a fragment of what it's costing us now in lost output and lost trade. It’s the best investment the world can make and the best ever insurance policy to stop the agony of lost lives.
