The Novel Coronavirus: Mission 2.0

The Novel Coronavirus: Mission 2.0

        On 11 June 2021, seven of the world's most influential and advanced economies came together in Cornwall, UK for the 47th G7 (Group of Seven) Summit. Of the many things they spoke on (as you can imagine), one of the many things they touched on was the pandemic and the call made by Host Prime Minister Boris Johnson to ensure an equal distribution of COVID-19 Vaccines, further testing of COVID-19, the Five-Point-Plan System and the creation of a Global Alert System. The nations eventually agreed to donate 1 Billion Vaccines to underdeveloped countries. Anyway, keep that in mind because we will get to that later.

What is Mission 2.0?

        Mission 2.0 is the beta version of what will be one of humans most advanced and difficult process we will ever face. It involves hundreds of thousands of construction containers, trucks, planes, ships and stacks of money and big factories to the extent that the world has never seen before. Mission 2.0 is the mission to get all 7 Billion of us vaccinated, to get the vaccines from factories to people's bodies and get them immunised. And this, in the long run, might just be human's most complicated and expensive mission ever.

        But thankfully, this is the beta version, not the alpha so we do have some sort of experience to work from. Mission 1.0 was to get masks, hand sanitizers, ventilation kits and PPE kits to every country and I think we can agree that that first mission was a great success. Although there were some hiccups like the Oxygen Crisis in India during May 2021 or the original explosion of cases in countries like Italy, South Korea, China etc. So what is stopping us from completing this mission. Well unlike masks or other medical equipment, vaccines are extremely sensitive when it comes to how it should be handled. The most common sensitivity temperature has? Temperature and what degree it should be stored in. 

Temperature

        When Moderna released its vaccine and information about it, one of the specific requirements was that its vaccine needed to be stored at -20°C. That was way lower than its manufacturing competitor, Pfizer, whose vaccine needed to be stored at -68°C. So Pfizer quickly developed a type of packaging to sustain its vaccine in the freezing temperature. But next is not the problem with vaccine, but the problem with storage and the proper facilities to store the vaccines. Some hospitals, especially rural ones, don't have the proper storage facilities to store vaccines and store equipment at a certain temperature. Now, I mentioned rural areas. Let's not forget that rural parts of the world usually lack airports, sea ports or any form of long-distanced transportation. So vaccines usually get to these locations via trucks (not to mention some roads might not be well-paved). 

        One such country that has struggled with Mission 2.0 is the country of Kenya, with its enormous 52.5 Million people, it is struggling to contain the spread of a second wave. The daily case count has been climbing in the past week but with only 0.2% of citizens fully vaccinated. Not to mention that there is not much facilities that can be used for storage and that Kenya's largest seaport, Mombasa, is around a 9-hour drive or an hour flight. Nairobi (Kenya's capital city) international airport only has one runway. But the most important fact on why Kenya is losing the 'Get Rid of COVID-19' race is money. Kenya is a lower-middle income country with leaks in its healthcare system. In this example, its not just Kenya, its many countries around the world. So what has been done to help lower-income countries.

COVAX

        In the first paragraph we talked about the recent G7 Summit in Cornwall where I wrote on a few things that the G7 discussed that:

"The Nations eventually agreed to donate 1 Billion Vaccines to underdeveloped countries."

        But before we get to that particular sentence. Let's go back to May 2020. During the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic, the British Government made a bilateral deal with Vaccine company AstraZeneca for 90-million doses of its vaccine for millions of dollars. But AstraZeneca's vaccine was only certified for 'official' use in November 2020. So why was there a deal? This type of deal is something like a Waiting Line. In other words, when the vaccine was available for 'official' use, the UK was allowed to receive vaccines before any other countries do. 

    This bilateral deal system puts poorer countries at a huge disadvantage who are stuck behind the richer countries in the waiting line all because of the universe's most important asset, money. So to solve this problem, the World Health Organisation, known by its brilliant acronym, WHO, created a system known as COVAX where richer countries donate vaccines to poorer countries to help aid them. So far, over 1 Billion doses of vaccine have been donated towards COVAX by various countries, which includes the G7 pledge. 

    

        But while COVAX is helping poorer countries, the WHO still allows countries with bilateral deals to keep them which doesn't really help as there is still a waiting line. In my opinion, COVAX is a really good initiative by WHO but to really tell this pandemic to "Get a Life", we need COVAX to cover everyone equally, rather than using the category of 'poorer/ underdeveloped countries'. So here's my COVAX suggestion. Any countries with current bilateral deals will be split 50/50. 50% of their deal will go towards COVAX and the other 50% will be for themselves. 

The New COVID-19 Variants

        Variants are, quite simply, one of the last problems we got to worry about. So far there are 4 variants that has affected the pandemic the greatest, cause a surge in both cases and deaths. So deadly that the WHO lists them as

"Variants of Concern"

        The are of course the UK Variant (B.1.1.7), South Africa Variant (B.1.351), Indian Variant (B.1.617), The Other Indian Variant (B.1.617.2) and the Brazil Variant (B.1.1.28) So far, new names have been given to these variant following the NATO Phonetic Alphabet Code so that the names are more simplified (possibly because no one wants to keep associating the country with the variant). So the new names are Alpha, Beta, Delta, Delta Plus, Gamma. I agree that so far, these variants are definitely of concern. And we need Mission 2.0 to go into full swing. 

        Let's use a metaphorical example. Imagine variants are like rain, trying to cause thunder showers everywhere, basically infecting people. Now imagine vaccines are like umbrellas, when people buy, carry or utilise their umbrellas, they are effectively stopping rain, the variants from falling on them. Now imagine that there are thousands of colours of rain. Everyone colour are the thousands of variants out there. If you stay at home, you won't get the rain. Sometimes, there is no rain on that day, sometimes, it can flood the streets. In this case, imagine the Government, trying to get everyone vaccinated, are the ones giving out umbrellas.

        To simplify, we need to get those vaccines out as quickly as we can. And I think the respective Governments aren't getting them out quick! If we don't get the vaccines out there, new variants may pop up. Let's create a variant and we will call it Variant Scary. Variant Scary is 3 times more transmissible, kills 5 times faster and lessens the immunity of the vaccine. If this variant does swing by, it could wreak havoc on the world. Companies will then have to create new vaccines that can increase overall immunity among the variants. This will take time. We have been lucky so far, despite all the variants popping up everywhere, the vaccines are still effective overall. But maybe, just maybe, this might happen and we could all go crazy and lose our minds...

Happy Reading!

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