Canada should focus on vaccine equity — not travel bans — human rights advocate, doctors say

Health and infectious disease specialists are calling for the government of Canada to focus on global vaccine equity, not travel bans, as it takes measures to respond to news of the omicron variant of COVID-19.

The doctors, along with a human rights policy specialist who spoke to CBC this week, said the federal government can and should increase its vaccine shipments to low-income countries sooner than planned, encourage more vaccine production and advocate for rules to make pharmaceutical companies release vaccine recipes.

And doing so is in the best interest of everyone, they said.

"If you don't want to be altruistic ... and if you only want to be self-interested, it's in your interest to have everybody on this planet vaccinated as soon as possible," said Dr. Ross Upshur, a professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the department of family medicine at the University of Toronto.

After news of omicron emerged, Canada announced it would limit travel from countries in southern Africa, a region that had reported cases of the new variant of concern. Critics immediately questioned the move — as it became clear that the variant was also surfacing in different parts of the world and in Canada.  

Infectious disease specialists have long said the way to prevent spread and mutation is to make sure countries around the world have enough vaccines for significant portions of their populations. The World Health Organization (WHO) set a goal to have 70 per cent of the globe's population fully vaccinated by mid-2022. 

But the world is far from that target with roughly 40 countries — most of them in Africa — that have less than 10 per cent of their populations vaccinated against COVID-19, according to vaccination data from local governments as of Wednesday via Our World in Data.

WATCH | South African doctor talks about symptoms of omicron:

"You're right to protect people in your countries, but then I would also caution you and say no one will sleep safely at night, not before Africa has been vaccinated," said Dr. Angelique Coetzee, one of the first doctors to detect the omicron variant in patients in South Africa.

Throughout the pandemic, Canada has provided vaccines and financial support to other countries through global efforts like the COVAX initiative, which pools funds from wealthier countries to buy vaccines for those countries and to ensure low- and middle-income countries have access.

The initiative had aimed to deliver at least two billion doses worldwide by the end of 2021. But the latest supply forecast in September showed it is expected to only have access to 1.425 billion doses this year.  COVAX has struggled to procure vaccines because many factories producing the shots are fulfilling orders placed by rich countries that paid top dollar for their doses.

The emergence of omicron shows Canada needs to do more and sooner, said the policy specialist who spoke to CBC. The first thing on the list should be prioritizing sending as many doses to countries with lower vaccination rates as soon as possible, he said.

"Until COVAX gets access to the doses that they need, we're going to continue to see this huge gap," said Ian Thomson of aid agency Oxfam Canada. 

Ottawa has pledged to donate the equivalent of 200 million vaccines (in actual doses and money to purchase doses) through COVAX by the end of 2022.