Charlize Theron and Darren Walker on How to End Global Vaccine Inequity
"Rich Countries Worry About Booster Shots. They Should Be Worried About Africa. "More than 85 poor countries will not have widespread access to coronavirus vaccines before 2023 "Most poor nations 'will take until 2024 to achieve mass Covid-19 immunisation'" " "
A woman looks on as she receives the Johnson and Johnson vaccine from Sister Nomhosi Msibi during the launch of the VaxuMzansi National Vaccine Day Campaign at the Gandhi Phoenix Settlement in Bhambayi township, north of Durban , on Sept. 24, 2021. Rajesh Jantilal—AFP/Getty Images
Ideas
By Charlize Theron and Darren Walker October 6, 2021 7:00 AM EDT
Charlize Theron is an Academy Award-winning actor, as well as an acclaimed TV and film producer. She also serves as a United Nations Messenger of Peace and founder of the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project, which champions the health, education and community support of young people living in Southern Africa. Darren Walker is president of the Ford Foundation, an international social-justice philanthropy with a mission to reduce poverty and injustice, strengthen democratic values, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement.
This month, for the first time in two years, the G20 will meet in Rome to discuss a global, multilateral agenda. The stakes could not be higher.
Certainly, member states are feeling the COVID-19 pandemic’s ongoing consequences. But, sadly, the 175 countries not at the table—most in the Global South—still face the gravest suffering and highest rates of death .. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51235105 .
Many countries across the Global South suffer a damning lack of vaccine doses—and even for those who do have access, uncertainty and vaccine hesitancy in vulnerable communities have been growing, due to either a lack of information, an excess of misinformation, or both. Without strong, robust civil-society organizations working on the ground to combat misinformation and support meaningful access for those in need, progress towards a more equitable recovery will be impossible.
As global leaders, the members of the G20 have an urgent responsibility: To end the immediate crisis of vaccine inequity todayand build long-term infrastructure that safeguards the world from future pandemics. First and foremost, this means supplying billions of doses to less-wealthy parts of the world. President Joe Biden’s recent commitment .. https://apnews.com/article/united-nations-general-assembly-joe-biden-pandemics-business-united-nations-e7c09c1f896d83c0ed80513082787bd3 .. to double U.S. vaccine donations is a welcome step—but even the 1.1 billion doses he vows to contribute will not be enough to reach global herd immunity. Ending this global health crisis requires a more robust and holistic sharing of resources.
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For instance, our current intellectual-property regime prioritizes pharmaceutical profit over public health outcomes. We recognize the power of intellectual-property protections to drive research, development, and innovation. But in the context of a pandemic like this one, those protections have deadly consequences by knee-capping the ability of resource-poor countries to manufacture life-saving vaccines. G20 members must join the more than 100 national governments and hundreds of civil-society organizations that have signed on to support a temporary waiver of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). With this waiver in place, government leaders around the world can finally build a vaccine infrastructure that empowers countries to quickly produce and distribute vaccines, in a way that’s rooted in collaboration, not competition.
Crucially, we also need to ensure we translate doses manufactured into shots in the arms of those in need. That necessitates a reimagined and strengthened health infrastructures that commits to bolstering civil society, community health workers, and community-based organizations.
Civil-society organizations have played an essential role in pandemic response—as watchdogs holding governments accountable, and as trusted partners and messengers serving vulnerable communities. From Dallas, Texas to Durban, South Africa, communities that have experienced a history of exploitation, neglect, and marginalization harbor an understandable distrust of the state. Understanding this fact is crucial, because in many places, like rural South Africa, distrust and hesitancy of the vaccines continue to rise, creating new barriers to recovery even as more doses become available.
Especially in regions marked by internal conflict, political tension, language barriers, and social unrest, even the most well-intended distribution policies will fail without strong civil-society engagement and community-led action from organizations with a well-established foundation of trust and support. We have seen time and again, in our work with frontline organizations like the Small Projects Foundation .. https://www.spf.org.za/ , that the messenger matters. Without robust civil-society organizations—including local newsrooms, community centers, and trusted health care providers—to disrupt dangerous COVID-19 conspiracies, vulnerable groups like women and immigrants are most likely to lack the information needed to make healthy choices. To create pipelines for a faster, more equitable response, the G20 must meaningfully invest in the work of such organizations.
Five years ago, we both joined thousands .. https://www.aids2016.org/ .. of activists in Durban to discuss another virus and global public health crisis: HIV/AIDS. There, at the 21st International AIDS Conference, we encouraged global leaders to disrupt the racism, sexism, transphobia, and homophobiathat make HIV a treatable illness for some and a death sentence for others. These types of inequities and fear drive pandemics. Since then, thanks to fearless leadership from people living with HIV and civil-society champions, we’ve seen ongoing advocacy lead to an increased focus and shift of resources to vulnerable populations like youth, and tangible policy changes .. https://www.iasociety.org/Web/WebContent/File/AIDS2016_Impact_Report.pdf .. like the government approval and formal rollout of the life-saving HIV preventative regimen PrEP in Kenya and increased HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention funding throughout the region.
Today, we’re trying to propel similar change to fight inequity and stymie the pandemic’s devastation of the Global South. At the Ford Foundation, we are proud to launch a new $16 million grant-making initiative that will spur intellectual-property reform, fund public goods, and bolster civil-society organizations working in marginalized communities. And at the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project, we’re working with longstanding partners to uproot harmful misinformation and vaccine hesitancy among adolescents and help remove barriers to vaccine access for young people, their families, and the under-resourced communities in which they live.
That said, no group has more influence than the G20 to redistribute vaccine supply, reinvest in medical and civil-society infrastructure, and reimagine our global systems with equity, justice, and collaboration at the heart. Together, we can build a more equal, more equally prepared world.
I've seen it many times. I know that he did the right thing giving ground until he could reach the level were he'd have more support. P - However, that wasn't apparent as it was unfolding. So, I wanted him to morph into the Atomic Blonde and kick the pursuer down the stairs. And then confront any other pursuers thusly,... https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=160811786
Want to cut your risk of serious COVID-19? New data shows vaccines are hitting the mark
"Rich Countries Worry About Booster Shots. They Should Be Worried About Africa."
Unvaccinated 36 times more likely to be hospitalized for COVID-19, new data shows
Lauren Pelley · CBC News · Posted: Sep 11, 2021 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: September 13
A growing body of data shows leading COVID-19 vaccines significantly reduce your risk of falling seriously ill or dying if you're infected with the coronavirus. But plenty of people still remain at a higher risk. (Getty Images)
Vaccines work. Before we move on to some caveats, let's start with that.
A growing body of global data shows that leading COVID-19 vaccines significantly reduce your risk of falling seriously ill or dying if you wind up infected with the coronavirus.
That's particularly the case when they're used alongside other public health measures to prevent infections from happening in the first place — and even when faced with the hyper-contagious delta variant.
They don't work perfectly, of course — and we'll get to that in a bit — but really, really well.
South of the border, a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e1.htm?s_cid=mm7037e1_w .. featuring data from early April to mid-July showed that people who were not fully vaccinated were at least 10 times more likely to be hospitalized or die of COVID-19 than those who were fully vaccinated.
But when it comes to the COVID-19 death toll, that's where things noticeably shift: Unvaccinated individuals had a significantly higher risk of dying after being infected with the virus than vaccinated individuals across every age category.
"It's much harder right now, I think, to try and say that vaccines don't work," said Jason Kindrachuk, an assistant professor in medical microbiology and infectious diseases at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.
"So unless you're basically kicking your feet and stomping really loudly, your message is going to get drowned out pretty quick just by the data we're seeing on a daily basis."
What vaccines do — and what they don't
But there is plenty of foot-stomping from some — and quiet concern from others — as reports of vaccines seemingly not working tend to dominate the headlines, be it debates over booster shots to combat the possibility of waning immunity or reports of post-vaccination infections.
Even the sky-high efficacy rates of mRNA vaccines during clinical trials left a little window of imperfection — and those trials happened long before this virus evolved to replicate quicker, spread faster and infect even more unsuspecting human hosts.
* Analysis Why it's now more likely you'll face coronavirus — even if you're vaccinated against COVID-19 .. bit outed here .. Research suggests that vaccinated individuals clear a delta infection quicker than those who aren't protected, but it's still a more formidable foe. Another study estimated that being infected with the variant leads to a 1,000 times higher viral load inside someone's nose when compared to the original strain. https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid19-coronavirus-vaccinated-1.6143572
It's helpful to remember that in day-to-day life, there's no magic way to avoid getting infected, save for locking yourself in a bunker. Layering protections such as masks and physical distancing seems to help, but as one vaccine expert told this reporter previously, it's worth noting that a vaccine doesn't provide that same kind of physical barrier to prevent someone from coughing or sneezing your way.
In other words, under the right circumstances — whether you're vaccinated or not — SARS-CoV-2 might find its way inside your body.
It's what happens next that's key.
A COVID-19 testing site at Evraz Place in Regina on Thursday. (Matthew Howard/CBC)
At a basic level, vaccines train your immune system to recognize a specific threat. If you're vaccinated, your body already has a heads-up about the virus, and if your immune system is functioning well, you can begin to fight it off. If you're not vaccinated, you're caught off guard, making it more likely you'll lose that battle.
So why do some fully vaccinated, highly protected people still wind up getting seriously ill, or even dying, from COVID-19?
"The people that are, relatively speaking, most at risk of having something bad happen after a breakthrough infection are the same people that are at highest risk of having something bad happen for any infection and for COVID-19," said Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Bhattacharya says that includes people who are immunosuppressed or those who are being treated for autoimmune disorders or certain types of cancer.
"Those are the kinds of things that would put you at pretty high risk of not responding that well to the vaccine," he said. "And as a result, being at high risk of severe disease."
Emerging hints about who's more at risk
Most public data doesn't actually tell you much about the age or health of people suffering from those "breakthrough" infections after full vaccination, but there are emerging hints about who's typically showing up at hospitals.
Research published on Tuesday in the Lancet .. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00558-2/fulltext#sec1 .. looked at 969 patients who were admitted to a Yale New Haven Health System hospital in Connecticut from late March to early July and wound up testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 — whether or not they were being treated for COVID-19 or another ailment.
During the study months, only 54of the admitted patients were fully vaccinated. Nearly half didn't show symptoms of COVID-19, despite testing positive for the virus, and had come to the hospital to treat another, unrelated diagnosis.
Out of those actually showing symptoms, roughly a quarter had severe or critical illness, including three deaths — and of that seriously ill group of fully vaccinated patients, the researchers found the median age was about 80 years old, with people experiencing various pre-existing health issues such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes or some kind of immunosuppressive drug or condition.
"Those are the people that are getting breakthrough infections: older, predominantly with underlying medical comorbidities,"said Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases specialist with the University Health Network in Toronto.
VIDEO - WATCH | Specialist explains who's getting serious breakthrough infections: Infectious diseases specialist on who's getting serious breakthrough infections 3 months ago Duration 0:55
Toronto-based infectious diseases specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch says new data from Public Health England shows the bulk of those getting serious breakthrough COVID-19 infections after full vaccinations are the elderly, suggesting that group may benefit from booster shots. 0:55
It's a small study at one hospital, but headline-making Israeli data over the summer also showed a rise in country-wide hospitalizations after the delta variant began circulating while restrictions were lifted, even among those fully vaccinated.
The majority of those seriously ill patients were seniors, had other chronic illnesses or were on immunosuppressive drugs, and were among the first in the country to be vaccinated more than five months prior, according to a number of medical professionals who helped put the raw tally in context.
"Yes, there are breakthrough infections. But when you look at that, as compared to the overall number of vaccinations that have been presented, it's a tiny population that we're seeing," stressed the University of Manitoba's Kindrachuk.
"In many cases, people see breakthrough infection, and now they equate that as being a normal event amongst people that are vaccinated — all the data certainly suggests the opposite to us."
In the heavily vaccinated U.K., officials are even urging the public to interpret their latest vaccination and infection data with caution.
"This is especially true because vaccination has been prioritized in individuals who are more susceptible or more at risk of severe disease."
Countries turning to booster shots
Against this backdrop of post-vaccination infections, there's a debate over whether to offer additional vaccine doses to give people's immune systems an extra boost — and, if so, who should actually get them.
Canada's National Advisory Committee on Immunization released recommendations on Friday to provide a third vaccine dose to some cancer patients, transplant recipients and people with advanced HIV infections or serious immunodeficiencies.
"Individuals who are moderately or severely immunocompromised, including those receiving immunosuppressive therapies, are more likely to have a lower immune response to only two doses of COVID-19 vaccines," Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer, noted in a statement released on Friday.
VIDEO - WATCH | Waning immunity sparks debate about need for COVID-19 booster shots: Waning immunity sparks debate about need for COVID-19 booster shots 4 months ago Duration 2:03
Recent studies show a drop in effectiveness for COVID-19 vaccines, but the lack of information about how severe breakthrough cases were has sparked a debate about whether booster shots are necessary. 2:03
Bhattacharya of the University of Arizona said there's "widespread consensus" about offering extra shots to those groups, with emerging evidence suggesting that seniors should be given additional doses as well.
Bogoch agreed that any booster shot programs should target both the elderly and immunocompromised but not the general public in Canada just yet — despite countries such as the U.S. and Israel already offering third doses to younger residents as well.
"It doesn't make any sense. You see virtually no serious, severe cases in those younger cohorts," Bogoch said. "And why would you? What would be the benefit of giving a vaccine there?"
These vaccines aren't meant to stop the coronavirus from entering and replicating in your body, he explained, though that's obviously a best-case scenario.
Instead, Bogoch said, COVID-19 vaccines are ultimately meant to prevent serious infection, hospitalization and death — "and they're still doing that."
Not perfectly — and not for everyone. But by and large, they work.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lauren Pelley is a CBC News reporter based in Toronto. Currently covering how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting Canadians, in Toronto and beyond. Contact her at: lauren.pelley@cbc.ca
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