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Letters | Will Covid vaccine partnerships offer cure for geopolitical problems?
- It is promising that in both China and India, companies are collaborating with foreign partners to supply Covid vaccines
I am writing to respond to your report, “Coronavirus eroded China’s middle class, but India has fared much worse, new findings reveal” (March 18).
Covid-19 has brought harm to the whole world, with pronounced effects in Asia. Nearly as many Indians have fallen from the ranks of the middle class as there are Canadians. This statistic, in and of itself, is biased towards better-off individuals in society since who knows how many members of India’s underclass, who live hand to mouth, have suffered difficult fates. The same story holds in many parts of the world, with small business hit harder than nearly all other sectors.
Looking forward, China’s Fosun Pharma is collaborating with BioNTech, which co-developed the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. Fosun and BioNTech have worked together in phase two trials, as well as other scientific research. Similar exercises have taken place between foreign pharmaceutical companies and Indian scientists.
Should such global partnerships deepen, as different parties work together to solve the world’s pressing health problems, one hopes that better times lie ahead for geopolitical relations, as well as class relations domestically.
Kelly Chan, Tin Shui Wai
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