As COVID-19 restrictions ease in the United States, it is clear that life is slowly beginning to return to a pre-pandemic state of normalcy. The ability to return to this normalcy is largely due to the relatively successful vaccine outreach and health education strategies employed by the current administration, along with high levels of accessibility to the COVID-19 vaccine.
However, as a child of immigrants with several family members still living abroad, this reality is bittersweet. Although the U.S. may reach herd immunity soon, developing nations and millions of communities abroad will be left shattered for years to come due to disparities in vaccine accessibility and outreach. Across the globe, the World Health Organization has indicated that “the COVID-19 pandemic and containment responses have exacerbated existing social, economic, gender, ethnic and health inequities,” and while anxieties about returning to pre-pandemic life in the U.S. are well-founded and valid, the health disparities seen in developing countries and failing health infrastructures have become a significant global health concern.
With increased accessibility provided with walk-in appointments, the United States’s COVID-19 vaccine program has seen success with a fairly strong rate of vaccination in the United States, despite issues surrounding vaccine hesitancy. Although still being shy of President Biden’s goal of vaccinating 70 percent of the U.S. population by July 4, roughly 50 percent of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated. In fact, according to the CDC, as of July 1, over 155.9 million people in the United States are fully vaccinated. In order to achieve herd immunity against COVID-19, roughly 70 percent of the population would need to be vaccinated; with current vaccination rates, the U.S. is close to reaching this threshold.
However, in recent months, domestic health disparities within the U.S. have caused an uproar around vaccine distribution from the uneven rollout of vaccinations in prisons to the effects of historic and ongoing racism. From a national perspective, there is distinct inequity in vaccine distribution. Similarly, these disparities cross the United States’s borders and impact other developing countries to a much larger degree. As we look at the immense vaccine gap in other countries, it is clear that while the vaccination pace in the U.S. has been swift, this is not the case worldwide.
The case for multilateral approaches to improve access and delivery of the vaccine has been made to the extent that specialized programs have been developed to address vaccine-related disparities. One of these initiatives, known as the Gavi COVAX AMC, has committed to providing financing support for 92 low- and middle-income economies in order to enable access to donor-funded doses of the COVID-19 vaccines. Efforts like these are essential to preserving the health of our international community and indeed for the betterment of global health equity. According to an article by the Makerere University Medical School, “addressing social determinants of health will yield greater and sustainable returns to existing efforts to improving global health.”
Without the proper support, the global situation is set to become uncontainable. Action should be taken to address vaccine inequity as a matter of urgent moral consciousness. The global consensus is that the unequal distribution of vaccines is not only a moral outrage but economically and epidemiologically self-defeating. The situation at hand draws several parallels to the effects of Ebola in poor countries. High economic disruption poses risks for poor households, whose livelihoods are already precarious. Not only do struggling economies and those who are now left without financial support lack the vaccine, but they also lack the finances to support healthy lifestyles, coupled with the inability to pay for medical services if needed.
While the U.S. economy was also significantly affected, the domestic situation quickly became politicized as well, which affected adherence to protocols such as social distancing. American financial loss was then addressed as a matter of the utmost importance since it came on the heels of an already challenged and changing workforce structure.
This does not mean that there was a health-economy trade-off, in fact, it is just the opposite. More good news follows in the optimism of the economic reports that assess the effects of the pandemic one year in. The same cannot be said for developing nations that are projected to bear the brunt of the pandemic for years to come. These developing countries lack the economic resources to acquire enough vaccines, and their struggling public health systems are faring poorly to treat large numbers of COVID patients, with cases abroad rising rapidly.
The health infrastructure in the U.S. was completely overwhelmed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Massive shortcomings and flaws in our public health care system were exposed, but the country’s problem was a widespread and global occurrence that has made it very clear that global health security needs to be addressed by all countries lacking sufficient health coverage.
In comparison to other countries, the USA’s health infrastructure fared respectably despite “a disjointed, reluctant and often contradictory public health response to the pandemic, driven by political apathy toward the virus threat.” As assessed in a comparison of health care systems around the world, infrastructures in countries other than the USA, such as Italy, Brazil and India, entirely collapsed.
Our world is forever changed. From perspectives on medical care and global outreach to understanding how COVID-19 (and every country’s response to it) affected the environment, this has been and continues to be a global and diverse experience. With all things considered, it is a privilege to become vaccinated. Those in the United States have the luxury that millions of unvaccinated people in war-torn and economically challenged countries do not. These countries and their people need help. Without the support of the countries that can assist, the effects of COVID-19 will destroy and forever cripple developing nations.
Rohan Arora is a climate health activist and the executive director of The Community Check-Up, a national environmental health organization working to empower youth to become changemakers in their local communities.
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