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Written by: Commentary Editing Room
2021-02-02 17:40
The last update date: 2021-02-02 17:40
In response to the failure of the new crown vaccine manufacturer to ship as scheduled, the European Union imposed temporary export controls on the vaccine to the United Kingdom on Saturday (January 30).
Given the shortage of vaccine supply, the European Union’s attempts to protect domestic citizens' priority vaccination rights through control will only make the global vaccine supply more uneven and prolong the time for the global return to normal.
Last week, the European Union decided to impose restrictions on vaccine exports in response to delays in the delivery of vaccines by several pharmaceutical factories. Among them, AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical manufacturer, had a problem with its production line in Belgium. Dana, Pfizer and BioNTech also see similar issues.
The EU has imposed temporary controls on the export of all new crown vaccines from last Saturday until the end of March, and all suppliers must first obtain approval to export vaccines.
It even initiated emergency measures in the Northern Ireland Agreement to stop the "loophole" in the free customs clearance of the vaccine from Ireland to the United Kingdom.
Although the leaders of Britain, Ireland and Northern Ireland strongly opposed and negotiated, the EU quickly withdrew its unilateral control.
However, pharmaceutical companies still need to honor their supply to the EU before they can export to other countries, otherwise member states have the right to restrict vaccine exports.
New crown pneumonia outbreak in the UK: The picture shows a staff member of the Intensive Care Department of a hospital in London, UK taking care of a patient with new crown pneumonia on January 27.
(AP)
EU protectionism is not the first
The global impact of the new EU regulations is currently unpredictable.
As the EU’s export restrictions only exempt Switzerland, Norway, Western Balkans, North Africa and WHO’s Global Covid-19 Vaccine Guarantee Mechanism (Covax), the new regulations may not only delay the purchase of 7.5 million doses from the United States, Canada, Australia, and Hong Kong from BioNTech in Germany. Afterwards, the Hong Kong government has indicated that it will actively follow up the supply of vaccines.
At the same time, the situation in backward countries will become more severe.
According to a research report by The Economist, as many as 84 poor countries will not have enough vaccines to achieve herd immunity before 2024, and this inequality has not only been criticized by WHO Director-General Tedros Disastrous moral failure".
As the former President of the European Commission Juncker criticized, some member states imposed restrictions on the export of medical supplies at the beginning of the epidemic. Fortunately, the Commission corrected the practice.
Now the European Union has once again moved out of protectionism, taking the lead in re-taking the old European Union.
South African President Ramaphosa also accused the rich countries of "hoarding inventories" at the World Economic Forum a few days ago, ignoring the urgent needs of other countries.
The EU may have reasonable considerations for protecting citizens within its borders, but Ramaphosa’s criticism is really not aimless.
According to the "New York Times" statistics, the purchase dose signed by the EU and various pharmaceutical companies is sufficient to vaccinate its citizens 1.5 times; Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States have 2 times; Canada has up to 4 times.
At the same time, even if the WHO initiated Covax to coordinate resources in order to solve the problem of uneven vaccine distribution, the funding gap for the project is still as high as 4.3 billion US dollars. Not only is it difficult to start supplying vaccines before the end of this month, but the doses are only the countries involved. Twenty percent of the population cannot achieve group immunity at all.
However, even if developed countries can selfishly seize all vaccines, their epidemic prevention projects will not be able to protect themselves.
Because under the uneven distribution of vaccines, the longer the virus spreads uncontrollably in developing countries, the greater the possibility that the virus will mutate. The situation is similar to the earlier viruses with stronger transmission power in the UK and South Africa. There is a great opportunity to spread to developed countries through the movement of people and goods, adding to the difficulty and variables of epidemic prevention.
It is true that calling on developed countries to surrender vaccines may be a matter of hope, but is the "third way" possible?
Economists Arnab Acharya and Sanjay G. Reddy wrote an article at the end of last year suggesting that if developed countries are willing to assume international humanitarian responsibilities, they can try to persuade pharmaceutical companies to temporarily abandon the intellectual property rights of vaccines, and let poor countries refer to their secret prescriptions to develop "Natural Cannon Vaccine" emergency.
Only two economists did not answer the key problem, that is, how to persuade the pharmaceutical companies to compensate the development costs and potential profits of the pharmaceutical companies.
However, COVID-19 is that no country can take care of itself, and the potential harm of uneven vaccine distribution is even impossible to estimate. Even if pharmaceutical companies are unwilling to sacrifice their intellectual property rights, governments of all countries must adopt an attitude of knowing that they cannot do anything to attract drugs. The factory negotiates a compromise.
Only this can solve this once-in-a-hundred-year disaster as soon as possible.
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