The third wave and a vaccine equity plan

Lesego Nswahu Nchunga | Monday August 2, 2021 15:08

The Delta variant however, has a whole different script. It is killing the young people. Initially, we were told to wash our hands and not touch our faces. Now, even when we wear masks, sanitise, and socially distance, the virus continues to be a haunting probability. The reality is that Africa narrowly escaped COVID in the year 2020. This year, the thing has come with a new found wrath and brutality. It has morphed and mutated and is now spreading at the most unimaginable rate. We are failing to contain it.

I keep having to brush aside memories of the Italian president crying about the number of his country people lost to corona virus; how so many people did not even have the luxury of a mortuary stay and a dignified funeral with loved ones; how heaps and heaps of bodies were disposed of in efforts to not spread the virus, but it spread anyway. I try not to think about it because if I allowed myself to, I think I would realize how far worse we are. Think about it: we still attend the funerals of loved ones who are taken by COVID, despite knowing very well that funerals are super spreader events. Our COVID positive loved ones who die, come home for us to bury them. Following the funeral, most people do not isolate for the mandatory time as provided for in the COVID protocols. Instead, we immediately go to the store; or to see our loved ones; or just out to the streets.

Many of us are unemployed or underemployed and cannot afford to privately transport ourselves following testing. So we resort to using public transport, even with a positive result. When an announcement is made about stricter measures in efforts to manage our behaviours, many people immediately start to fashion ways to help them default from compliance. There is a continued stigma related to the virus which is perpetuated by lack of knowledge. The divide between the Ministry of health and the COVID-19 task force, is a dividing factor, causing mismanagement at different levels. Hospitals are full to capacity. Most have insufficient beds to serve the populations and ventilators were never enough from the very beginning. Batswana are so convinced that home remedies are the only option – and perhaps we need to consider why that is. It is dire.

It feels like we are living in the shadow of death and not necessarily walking through it. Of course, COVID-19 is not spread by people trying to find a semblance normalcy – no! It is also not to say that our desperate need to connect and be in community in this time justifies COVID positive results-no! What I am saying is that it is bad, and if there is one thing we should know about how bad it is, is that nobody is coming to save us from this horror, unless we save ourselves. This sobering reality is the backdrop of any and every conversation on vaccine equity.

In addition to the devastating state of our individual health, and the dwindling care of our health systems as a continent and as a country, we have also suffered a terrible economic crisis, triggering our first recession in 25years. Our GDP has fallen, and experts predict that we will be the slowest growing large region. The impacts of this drop will be more gravely felt in coming years.

To date, we are unable to afford mass testing, and as we have seen, we are unable to collect reliable data on cases and therefore deaths. So many young people are on the verge of losing their jobs. Lockdowns killed many small and medium enterprises to a great extent. Many franchises are also closing their doors and hanging their banners. Some have said it can only get worse before it gets better.

Global recovery is not top on the agendas of the world’s wealthier countries, whose focus is go iphakela, while we look on, wondering when we will ever have the vaccine. The world’s wealthiest countries are even talking about rolling out booster shots to their populations, while in our countries, a considerable majority of us are yet to get the first shot. The inequitable distribution of the vaccine is leaving us vulnerable to the virus, and enables the development of deadlier variants.

Activists across the world are calling for a stepped up coordinated strategy. It would be backed by new financing would be implemented to ensure that all or atleast most people around the world are vaccinated. International bodies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have developed a clear strategy, with practical action and even feasible costs, to support the work of increasing and accelerate access to the vaccine. The first step of the plan is to ensure that 30% of the world population are vaccinated by 2021. Secondly, there is need to ensure the management of downside risks such as new variants, which may necessitate booster shots.

Finally, the plan is to boost testing and contact tracing, as well as beefing up health measures in response to COVID-19.

These steps will definitely ensure that no one country needs to hoard at the rate that the hoarding is happening now. Of course, the most critical steps is for our leader to agree, and actually implement this for the good of their countries, without expecting to directly benefit fron it.

I hope it can be implemented. We have no other option but to keep our faith and stand in the hope that the world we live in is a world we can eventually depend on.

In the meantime, stay home. This new variant is honestly not worth it.