How Can Journalists Report Accurately on Issues of Vaccine Inequity?
In year two of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s tempting to ask – why is this still happening? Healthcare systems have been pushed to the brink on a global scale, and the inequity in healthcare between countries has led to vastly differing responses and consequences to outbreaks of COVID-19 among populations. For example, vaccine inequity in India in the early summer of 2021 led to the deadliest wave of COVID-19 in the world thus far: the Delta outbreak that at its peak claimed the lives of nearly four thousand Indians a day. The Omicron variant was also borne out of a lack of access to vaccines in Africa.
Journalists have been sounding the alarm on vaccine inequity since the vaccine became available. However, much of the general population – particularly in the United States – remains unaware of the causes and effects of vaccine inequity. The public is a journalist’s greatest asset. So how do we get the public on our side when reporting on an issue that may not directly affect a large portion of our audience?
Be deliberate about reporting the causes. The finer points of manufacturing vaccines and selling across the lines of sovereign nations are lost on most people, and so, understanding what issues got the continent of Africa access to only six percent of total COVID-19 vaccines by the end of 2021 is vital. Africa imports 99 percent of its vaccines because very few African nations have the means to manufacture the vaccine. “We need to reshape the market so that we don’t just make India a kitchen for everybody,” said Dr. John Nkengasong, a Cameroonian virologist and the head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). “For that to happen, there needs to be some guarantee that [countries and organizations] will buy volumes of vaccines from Africa…achieving this means incentivizing research and development and vaccine production in partnership with national governments.”
Look for company interference. What companies are showing reluctance to donate excess vaccine supply or else are deliberately not selling certain vaccines to certain nations? For example, Pfizer has not allowed its vaccine to be distributed via the World Health Organization’s mRNA hubs, which were set up to ameliorate access to vaccines in low-access countries, including South Africa, where the first outbreak of the extremely virulent Omicron variant occurred. A bill to waive patent copyright over the formula of the vaccine has also been held up for close to 18 months.
Representing current vaccination status. As of February 20, 2022, only 11 percent of all people in low-income countries had received a COVID-19 vaccine, and only 25 percent of healthcare workers in the entire continent of Africa had received a COVID-19 vaccine. By contrast, 90 percent of people in wealthy countries (combined stat.) have received a COVID-19 vaccine. Approximately three billion people, or close to 40 percent of the world’s population, have not received a single dose. The countries that have the lowest rates of vaccination have no manufacturing capacity and have low income, effectively preventing them from buying or making their own doses of the life-saving vaccine.
Consequences. It is true that in countries where COVID-19 vaccinations and boosters are readily available, SARS-CoV-2 will likely become a controllable infection. However, in countries where only six percent of the population has been vaccinated over two years, new variants, vaccine evasion, and working/living conditions will exacerbate COVID-19 morbidities. This will also complicate life for the fully vaccinated, as a new variant formed from these circumstances could render the current COVID-19 vaccine ineffective.
Offer solutions: Several sites reporting on these inequities have offered their own visions for solving the inequity issue. Most, if not all, of the solutions involve expanding manufacturing capacity across less developed and smaller countries. Important in the next step of this popular solution is to break the patent across any and all COVID-19 vaccines, to be sure all countries have equitable access to the formulas and ingredients they will need to manufacture said vaccines. Finally, taking into account the changing landscape of population immunity versus COVID-19 outbreaks, the system must be able to freely adapt without compromising manufacturing capacity.
It’s become a great catch-phrase to say, “None of us are safe until all of us are safe,” but what does that actually look like? As journalists, our job is to pull back the curtain on the greater workings that keep us all unsafe and come up with community solutions. Outlining the entire scope of the problem, including some ideas looking forward, is how we can get the world on our side.
