The failure to vaccinate the world against coronavirus will come back to haunt even fully vaccinated Britons in 2022, Gordon Brown has warned. The former prime minister said the emergence of Omicron was “not Africa’s fault”, and added that new variants would continue to wreak havoc because richer countries such as the UK had “stockpiled” hundreds of millions of vaccines. He rubbished suggestions wealthier nations faced a choice between offering boosters to their own citizens or sharing doses with people living in poorer countries. “Ours is not a fraught choice between boosters and vaccinating the world. We are manufacturing enough vaccines … to immunise the whole world.” Instead, Brown said it was an “inescapable and unacceptable fact” that of the billions of vaccines administered, only 0.6% ended up in low-income countries.
Writing in the Guardian, Brown cautioned that “even the fully vaccinated” in Britain remained at risk as long as the virus was given “free rein to mutate” in countries with poor access to jabs. “The grim truth remains that until no one anywhere lives in fear, then everyone everywhere will have to live in fear. “The new variant is not Africa’s fault,” he said. “Responsibility starts with the governments of wealthy nations who stockpiled hundreds of millions of vaccines and who, even when warned about the failure to vaccinate more vulnerable parts of the world, did too little as the virus mutated.”
Brown issued a plea to world leaders to fund a $23.4bn (£17.7bn) plan by the World Health Organization and other aid groups to bring Covid vaccines, tests and drugs to poorer countries in the next 12 months. “The great global challenge of 2022 must be to wipe away that stain by finding the money to bridge the yawning divide between the world’s protected rich and unprotected poor,” Brown said. “In the first weeks of 2022, we need to achieve for the world what Britain is attempting for our own citizens: to deploy every available nurse, enlist every available community health worker, provide every available test and treatment, commandeer every known distribution agency, and summon up the support of the military where necessary.”
While he accepted the $23.4bn was a “huge sum”, Brown said it was 200 times smaller than the $5.3tn the International Monetary Fund estimated would be the Covid-induced loss of economic output by 2025. “The $23bn breaks down to just 10p a week, to be paid by every citizen of the global north, and would be the best investment in world history,” he added. “Surely making the difference between life and death is worth more than the price of the cheapest biscuit?”