Opinion | Vaccine inequality persists as world enters third year of the Covid-19 pandemic

Name: Omicron Covid-19 variant spreading much faster than Delta, WHO says
Uploaded: 2021-12-23T19:30:15.000Z
Duration: 2 min 2 s
Description: Omicron Covid-19 variant spreading much faster than Delta, WHO says

Despite the many other measures put in place, achieving herd immunity is still essential to bring the pandemic to an end

That job remains only half done as developing countries are struggling to get vaccine doses while the wealthy world hands out booster shots

Reading Time:3 minutes

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Syed Munir Khasru

Published: 3:30am, 24 Dec 2021

In 2022, the world enters the third year since Covid-19 appeared in late 2019, with different variants emerging. Pfizer estimates that the pandemic could extend to 2024, even when large swathes of the global population have been vaccinated.

To understand why the pandemic is stretching out, three things need to be examined: the importance of herd immunity; vaccine efficacy; and, the emerging Covid-19 variants.

Social distancing, wearing a mask, personal hygiene routines and government-imposed national lockdowns have all been put forward as ways to reduce the spread of Covid-19. After the World Health Organization announced that the coronavirus outbreak had become a pandemic in early 2020, it was clear there was no quick cure for the highly infectious virus.

The one long-term solution is to prevent its spread by achieving herd immunity through a global mass vaccination programme. After a year of research, the world produced vaccines with comparatively high rates of efficacy.

However, herd immunity continues to be crucial to prevent the pandemic from continuing. This needs to be achieved before vaccine efficacy falls as new variants emerge across the globe.

02:02

Omicron Covid-19 variant spreading much faster than Delta, WHO says

The pandemic took a drastic turn in South Asia, particularly India, where lockdowns were lifted too early, leading to a rapid spread of Covid-19 and the subsequent mutation to the Delta variant. This variant brought down vaccine efficacy, but they were still effective.