Coronavirus: Labour warns of ‘vaccine nationalism’ as global race to find cure intensifies

Concern raised over prospect of governments scrambling to secure their own populations’ vaccine needs instead of prioritising global efforts to fight Covid-19, writes Samuel Lovett

Numerous vaccine candidates are currently being trialled on humans (AFP/Getty)

Labour has warned of the growing threat of “vaccine nationalism” as the global race to develop a form of immunisation against Covid-19 intensifies.

A number of governments across the world, including the UK and US, have already clinched production deals for the leading vaccine candidates that are being developed by the top pharmaceutical giants.

Last month, business minister Alok Sharma announced a £65.5m agreement with AstraZeneca, which was earlier granted the licensing for the promising Oxford University vaccine, that will see the firm deliver a total of 100 million doses for people in Britain.

AstraZeneca, based in Cambridge, is now establishing regional supply chains for the Americas, Europe, India, China and the rest of the world, and has told The Independent “to watch this space”, with additional agreements set to be announced in the coming weeks.

In the US, the Trump administration has selected five vaccine candidates for “Operation Warp Speed”, a public-private partnership that has received billions of taxpayers’ money for the research and development of a vaccine. In a deal worth up to £969m with AstraZeneca, the US has secured 300 million doses for American citizens, the first of which could be available as early as October.

The US Department of Health and Human Services has also agreed to provide up to £385m to the biotech company Moderna and £399m to Johnson & Johnson for their separate vaccine work.

But amid such developments, with numerous candidates currently being trialled on humans, concern has been raised over “vaccine nationalism” and the prospect of governments scrambling to secure their own populations’ vaccine needs, instead of prioritising global efforts to fight Covid-19.

Health institutions and forums such as the World Health Organisation, Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) have all called for cooperation and the equitable distribution of a vaccine – but there is mounting fear some actors on the world stage may opt to go it alone.

Ahead of Gavi’s Global Vaccine Summit, which will be hosted by the UK and aims to raise £5.9bn in funding for vaccines, shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy urged the government “to take a leadership role” in promoting global solidarity and rejecting “vaccine nationalism”.

“We’ve got this major conference where countries will come together to try and raise money not just for a Covid vaccine, but vaccines across the world,” Ms Nandy told the BBC.

“The US is again conspicuous by its absence. We’ve had repeated occurrences of this over the last few weeks. The G7 isn’t now meeting, the G20 currently isn’t meeting. All those global forums where world leaders would come together and work together to make sure we have sufficient quantities of these vaccines once they’re discovered … they’re just not happening.

“At the same time, we’ve seen a rise in what some people are calling vaccine nationalism where countries are trying to buy up exclusive access to potential vaccines for their own citizens.

“We know that to eradicate Covid-19 we’re going to have to make sure this vaccine gets to many countries around the world.

“Without global cooperation we will slow down the discovery of the vaccine and we will not get it to those who most need it, and that’s why we want Britain to take a leadership role.”

Ms Nandy added that the UK government appeared to be “pinning its hopes” on the AstraZeneca-Oxford University vaccine, which she described as a “risky gamble to take”.

Although the pharmaceutical giant last week announced that it had partnered with British cell-therapy company Oxford Biomedica to bolster its manufacturing capacity to produce 1 billion doses globally, the shadow foreign secretary questioned the UK’s ability to develop the required quantities.

“The government has put a bit of money into trying to scale up our manufacturing capacity, but during this crisis we’ve seen how we’ve been heavily reliant on countries like India for paracetamol, China for PPE – we simply don’t have the manufacturing capacity we need here in Britain in order to develop the quantities of vaccines that would be required,” she said.

Ms Nandy also urged the government to appoint a “vaccine tsar” who could help coordinate these global efforts to ensure “that countries didn’t appropriate the vaccine” and that it is “manufactured across the world”.