Yes, the British vaccine rollout has been impressive, but no one is safe until everyone is safe

Editorial: Our efforts to vaccinate will be in vain if the virus is allowed to spread and mutate into dangerous new forms in poorer nations

The variant of concern, P1, is becoming the dominant coronavirus in Brazil (Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

As with every pandemic, and indeed every infectious disease, the old slogan is right: no one is safe until everyone is safe. Successful as the British vaccination programme continues to be, it may all be in vain if vast populous tracts of the world remain harbours for the coronavirus, in effect safe havens for it to reproduce and mutate unimpeded in poorer nations with large populations and rudimentary health services. Recent events in Brazil prove the point graphically and poignantly.

One particular variant of concern, P1, which comprises various sub-variants, is now becoming the dominant coronavirus in Brazil. It is much more transmissible than the original variant, and it may also possess greater resistance to antibodies, either in people previously infected or who have been fortunate enough to have received a vaccination. The experts seem not to have a definitive view on that aspect of the danger, though it may only be a matter of time before such a mutation does evolve. That, after all, is the routine experience with the flu, and in that respect the coronavirus is a predictable organism. The point stands, however, that the more suppression of the virus there is across the world, the less chance there is of these more vicious and infectious variants appearing, and the less chance of them turning up in Britain.

Brazil’s hospitals are being overwhelmed. There are not enough beds, equipment, oxygen or treatments to manage the rising wave of cases, let alone vaccines, and many more loved ones are being taken, incessantly. Public health officials are warning the world about the danger approaching, a virus that is like an “atom bomb” in its potential for destruction. The autocrat of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has made few constructive moves to reduce infection rates, and is proud of “defying” the virus which eventually came to infect him, at least proving it is no hoax. Yet that is not reason to visit misery on the people of his country, or to leave Brazil, and countries like it, to its fate – because if the rich world does, it too will face the exact same challenges that Brazil is suffering with.

The west deludes itself if it supposes that herd immunity will last for long if a new super-variant emerges far, far away, or within the UK for that matter, as the Kent variant shows. No country, neither New Zealand nor Taiwan nor even North Korea, can hermetically seal itself off from the world. It is not practical, it cannot be supported economically, and it doesn’t work anyway. Indeed, the P1 variant is already making its malign presence felt in the Americas, Europe and Japan.

The better news is that the existing vaccines, western, Chinese and Russian, may still prove partially effective in taking the edge off a Covid-19 infection and making death less likely. The scientists can also develop variants of their vaccines to match the variants of the virus, but it is a race, and the race is made more difficult to win by vaccine nationalism.

Politically, it is impossible to imagine western governments sending many doses to Brazil, South Africa or Yemen, say, while their own elderly and vulnerable citizens are still patiently waiting their turn in the queue. Yet the moral and epidemiological case for global action to meet a global pandemic is unanswerable.

Countries such as Britain are right to take pride in their recent achievements, but even if the country was able to declare itself a zero-Covid nation (unrealistic in any case), it would not stay that way for long if the virus is spreading across hundreds of millions of people worldwide, each a sort of lab for the virus to continue to evolve along Darwinian lines. No one is safe until everyone is safe.