World’s quest for a Covid-19 vaccine is in danger of becoming a free-for-all as nationalism surges

On the one hand, at least 50 former world leaders including from the African Union, have called in an open letter for the eventual Covid-19 vaccine to become “the people’s vaccine” – a public good for the world, patent-free, produced at scale and made at no cost to people everywhere: “We cannot afford for monopolies, crude competition and nearsighted nationalism to stand in the way,” it says.

Last month, Antonio Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, said: “A world free of Covid-19 requires the most massive public health effort in global history.” He added: “Data must be shared, production capacity prepared, resources mobilised, communities engaged and politics set aside … Covid-19 anywhere is a threat to people everywhere.”

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, while leading an international donor conference earlier this month that raised US$8 billion in commitments for collaboration in developing and distributing a vaccine, also acknowledged the imperative for global cooperation to tackle a clearly global problem: “We need to produce it and to deploy it to every single corner of the world … This vaccine will and must be our universal, common good.”

In the US, President Donald Trump has launched “Operation Warp Speed” to be first to deliver a vaccine to its public – 300 million doses by January. An outraged German government has reportedly stymied a US government-funded attempt to acquire exclusive rights to a potential vaccine that German company CureVac is developing.