Covid-19 vaccine diplomacy: Politics and profit over people

Disparity in the vaccination drive across countries has once again accentuated the global inequality and it is threatening to further widen the gap between the influential and the vulnerable countries. The initial excitement over the development of multiple vaccines has somewhat died down when a few countries started to use the vaccine as a tool to advance their own political and economic agenda. Vaccine diplomacy has already become a crucial factor in the global power play and four countries are at the forefront of the game right now: US, China, Russia, and India. Their strategies are taking new twists and turns all the time while the fate of billions is hanging in the balance.

Many have wondered about the puzzling absence of US in the growing diplomatic vaccine battle among superpowers despite the fact that two of the most effective jabs were produced by US-based pharmaceutical companies Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. Biden administration has carried on with former president Trump’s ‘America First’ motto in this regard and concentrated primarily on inoculating their own citizens first. Political commentators have termed this policy as ‘vaccine nationalism’ and this self-serving bias has reached to an extreme level. US secured enough shots for vaccinating its entire population by mid 2021, and then it started to stockpile either to use these as booster dose or use this surplus next year! When the middle and low- income countries were grappling to manage vaccine even for the frontline health workers and elderly people, and US embargo on vaccine export worsened their woes. Inward-looking policy of US has paved the way for other countries to play their cards.

The news of approving the first Covid-19 vaccine, Sputnik V, came from Russia in August 2020, and naming the vaccine after world’s first artificial satellite signifies Russia’s effort to reassert its global influence. Medical experts criticized the lack of reliable data after it was endorsed by the Russian government and the roll out process was quite slow at the beginning as Russians had doubts over the efficacy of the vaccine (it should be noted that recent data show the vaccine is almost 90% effective). Low domestic uptake prompted the Russian government to export vaccines to other countries and there were many interested parties at the receiving end, the countries that failed to get hold of vaccine from other sources. Russia capitalized the geopolitical opportunity to pursue their vested interest. For example, after delivering Sputnik V batch to Bolivia, Russian president Vladimir Putin discussed with his Bolivian counterpart the possibility of building a nuclear plant and exploring lithium mining opportunity. Similar approaches have been observed in dealings with other countries as well.

China’s reputation hit a new low due to the barrage of allegations over mishandling the pandemic at its early stage, and the government has been desperate to restore its prestige ever since. It started sending out masks and personal protective equipment (PPE) to different countries in early 2020 and the development of effective vaccine ‘Sinovac’ by the state-owned firm in late 2020 enriched their armory. Though the efficacy of the vaccine was recorded as low as 50.4% in some trials, it has been serving as a valuable option for the countries hardly struck by the vaccine shortages. China’s vaccine delivery drive has often been labelled ‘Health Silk Road’, referring to the country’s multibillion-dollar ambitious project ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI). The purpose of BRI is to increase trade worldwide and China has been chasing the same goal of fostering its trade ties with the vaccine distribution initiative. For instance, after receiving Sinovac, Brazil lifted bar on the Chinese company Huawei Technologies Ltd and permitted them to participate in the coming 5G network auction. On the other hand, Brazil’s neighbor Paraguay could not avail Sinovac because of their support for Taiwan’s sovereignty, a claim outrightly rejected by China. This shows that China’s vaccine distribution has not been solely guided by altruistic motifs, political and business interests have also been key driving factors.

Countering China’s clout in Asia is one of the incentives behind India’s ‘Vaccine Maitri’ (Vaccine Friendship) initiative, a global effort to dole out vaccine to countries. India is one of the biggest producers of pharmaceutical products of the world and riding on this reputation, one private Indian company, Serum Institution, obtained the license from Oxford-Astrazeneca

to manufacture the Covishield vaccine. While many rich countries have been hoarding vaccines, India’s initiative to supply Covishield to poorer countries received admiration from the international community. India focused on improving its relations with its neighbors through vaccine diplomacy and even promised to provide 1.2 billion doses for World Health Organization’s (WHO) Covax program. India’s veteran politician Shashi Tharoor commended country’s smart exercise of soft power and hoped that this might help India to get support from the vaccine recipients in its future endeavor of securing a permanent seat in the United Nation’s security council. This along with other aspirations of India experienced an unexpected major shock when a deadly variant of the corona virus started to rage across the country with unprecedented fatality. India immediately stopped exporting vaccines to meet its domestic demand and that jeopardized other countries’ (such as Bangladesh) inoculation program that were heavily relying on India’s commitment.

The deep-rooted government-corporate nexus has become more glaring during the pandemic. Developing countries have been pressing for patent waiver of Covid-19 vaccine since last year but to no avail. After assuming power US president Biden expressed his interest to throw support behind the move but it received strong criticism from the multinational pharmaceutical companies. Biden commented that sharing vaccine recipe with other countries would boost up the production across the world as more and more countries will be able to manufacture the vaccine locally to meet their own demand and this will help to bring down the global infection rate very quickly. The opponents of the decision, mainly the pharmaceutical companies and their lobbyists, decried the decision claiming that it would undermine the private enterprises’ spirit of innovation. They argued that revoking patent protection would not help in scaling up vaccine production overnight because manufacturing requires sophisticated technology that pharmaceutical companies of poor countries would not be able upgrade very fast. The advocates of the patent waiver consider these grounds very lame and reiterated that any further delay on the matter would continue to complicate the ongoing crisis.

Unfortunately, the wealthiest nations cannot feel safe even after immunizing all their citizens and keeping their borders closed because the virus will continue to mutate as long as it keeps spreading and present vaccines will not work against the new variants. The severity of the impending crisis can be mitigated only if the global leaders can take a prompt decision to prioritize people’s lives over politics and profit. And the clock is ticking!

The writer is Assistant Professor Department of Media and Mass Communication, AIUB. He can be contacted at [email protected]