Dear President Biden, everyone needs access to the Covid vaccine, not just the US

Dear President Biden,

Here on the southern-most point of Africa, we held our breaths during the American election in November – trusting that good would again prevail after the last four years which often left us bewildered and speechless. So, when you won, we cheered. With your track record, your values and your commitment to decency we started to trust that the world would be a better place again under your watch, knowing that whoever occupies the White House determines so much of what also happens outside of the borders of the United States of America.

You have already made many changes for the better – not least of all your recent announcements on emission targets. We applaud you for that.

A few days ago, you also announced that 200 million vaccines had been administered in the United States of America during the first 92 days of your presidency.  You proudly proclaimed that this was an incredible achievement and that all Americans would be vaccinated in the next few months.

It is undoubtedly an impressive achievement. However, your success gives us much reason for despair, since it means fewer vaccines for the rest of the world, and in particular the developing world.

Mr. President, I’m sure you know that most of the developing countries, like my own, were not part of the pre-order process of the vaccines last year. We simply could not afford to gamble millions of dollars on the off-chance that pharmaceutical companies would develop a vaccine safe and appropriate for use in our environments.

We trusted that the global COVAX initiative (aimed at working with vaccine manufacturers to provide all countries with equitable access to safe and effective vaccines) would deliver. Now it turns out that, even in the best-case scenario, South Africa would get less than 10% of vaccines needed this year from COVAX. This is largely due to the over-buying of vaccines by countries such as your own.

Some scientists have predicted that it will take years – possibly until 2024 – to get South Africa and Africa sufficiently immunized to achieve herd immunity.

In the meantime, we are losing teachers, health care workers, politicians, musicians, sports stars, and perhaps saddest of all, the grandmothers who look after so many children in our land.

In my country, our president did not deny the pandemic the way your predecessor did. President Ramaphosa listened to scientists at home and around the world. He took all the right steps: making masks, social distancing, and hand sanitizing compulsory.  We have had curfews and alcohol and cigarette bans and we have been in various stages of lockdown for more than a year.

Our already struggling economy has contracted to a point where it is difficult to know if we will ever recover. Like the rest of the world, our only hope lies with a vaccine.

Yet, now we are faced with the reality of what our President calls “vaccine nationalism”. Rich countries such as yours have bought up most of the vaccines so far, even though you represent less than 14 per cent of the world’s population. Many rich countries have bought enough vaccines to vaccinate everyone in their country multiple times.

In what many are starting to call “vaccine apartheid” the haves are hoarding excess vaccines while the have nots continue to die. 

Of the 1 billion vaccines administered so far, only 0.2% have gone to low-income countries and only 1.3% to Africa.

To add insult to injury many of these vaccines have been and continue to be tested on the people of my continent. Some are even manufactured in the developing world. Yet, we can only watch as massive shipments leave our harbours to save the lives of those who through an accident of birth were fortunate enough to be born in the wealthy countries of the world.

President Biden, you spoke of a return to decency during your presidential campaign, but surely that decency can’t stop at your borders? Surely, that decency should extent to all on this earth?

We are not asking for charity. We are only asking for the world to be fair and for the decency you embrace to extend to us all.  Surely it can’t be fair or decent that young and fit 20-year-olds get immunised in America, Canada or Europe, while health care workers and the elderly in Africa continue to die for another year or more? Surely there is nothing to celebrate when people in India are collapsing and dying in the streets and babies are dying at an unprecedented rate in Brazil all because they (or their mothers) have not been vaccinated?  

It also seems obvious that unless the whole world achieves herd immunity no one will be safe – since the virus will continue to mutate and find ways around the vaccines.

In recent days you have promised to give 60 million dosages of the AstraZeneca vaccine (which your country no longer wants to use) to developing countries that need it. That should be welcomed, but it is a drop in the ocean.

Mr President, as the most powerful man on the earth we need you to do more. You can lead by example and commit to not hoarding any more vaccines whilst encouraging others to follow your lead. You can also put pressure on pharmaceutical companies to release their patents for the common good. These companies have, after all, received billions of dollars in funding to develop these vaccines.

In 1986 you gave a passionate speech in the Senate against President Reagan’s support for the Apartheid regime in South Africa. Over the last few months, this has been viewed (and applauded) by millions of South Africans.

At that time you attacked those who said that America must not become part of South Africa’s problems - that it was the responsibility of the leaders and people of my country to solve things by themselves. You asked how long the people of South Africa must wait: “Twenty days, twenty months, or twenty years, while the people are being crushed?”

You continued: “I hate that (our government) is refusing to act on a morally abhorrent issue. I’m ashamed that this country puts out a policy like this…”

Sir, 35 years later you are the President of the United States. We now turn to you and ask: “How long must we wait? Twenty days, twenty months, or twenty years while we are being crushed by this virus?”

Yours sincerely, Melanie Verwoerd