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A nurse prepares to give a shot of the Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine to Zimbabwean vice-president Constantino Chiwenga at a hospital in Harare on February 18, after Zimbabwe received 200,000 doses of the vaccine donated by China. Photo: AP
OpinionLetters

Letters | China’s coronavirus vaccine donation to Zimbabwe an example for wealthy nations to follow

  • Globalisation and technological advances mean no nation is safe from the coronavirus unless vaccination protection is available to all. Any ‘vaccine nationalism’ would be short-sighted
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I refer to your article “Chinese vaccines reach Zimbabwe as it receives its first Sinopharm doses” (February 15) regarding the recent donation of coronavirus vaccines to the African nation.

Due to technological advances and globalisation, the modern world is more interconnected than ever, with people able to potentially travel to any location in the world. Accordingly, we live in a society where health matters have taken on a global dimension, and the response to such matters should be on a global scale.

In the fight to quell the scourge of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is imperative that developed countries, and other countries that possess excess quantities of coronavirus vaccines, continue this trend of assisting the countries that have not yet begun national mass immunisation programmes.

Any “vaccine nationalism”, by which richer countries hoard vaccines to inoculate their own populations while poor countries wait their respective turn, would be both shortsighted and unethical.

01:56

Pakistan starts Covid-19 vaccine drive with over 500,000 jabs donated by China

Pakistan starts Covid-19 vaccine drive with over 500,000 jabs donated by China
By all means, governments should primarily focus on the safety and well-being of their own populations, but they would be fooling themselves if they believed they would not be affected by the dire vaccine situation in other countries. The heightened danger of even more contagious variants emerging in countries lacking access to vaccines, coupled with the interconnectedness of the modern world, ensures that no country is truly safe until every country has enacted a viable vaccination programme.

What if Covid-19 vaccines aren’t enough for herd immunity?

It is of paramount importance that the world does not become engulfed by vaccine inequality. Otherwise, the global impact of the pandemic will certainly be prolonged.

William Kerr-Phillips, Kowloon Tong

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