The geopolitical dispute over the vaccine and its impact on Latin America and the Caribbean

                                               The geopolitical dispute over the vaccine and its impact on Latin America and the Caribbean 

x Arantxa Tirado: There is a struggle between Western powers not only to create the vaccine but also to guarantee it first to their citizens in what has been called a "vaccine nationalism" 

The pandemic associated with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus continues to ravage the world. In the American continent, Covid-19 already exceeds 24 million cases and 690,000 deaths. Of this global, 10.5 million cases and 313,000 deaths correspond to South America; almost 544,000 infections and some 13,000 deaths to Central America; 267,300 cases and 4,800 deaths to the Caribbean; and 1 million infected and almost 100,000 deaths to Mexico. 

 While some countries suffer from this "second wave", different research centers, public and private, continue their race to find a vaccine that "saves humanity" from Covid-19. 

 The geopolitical struggle for the cure 

 Getting the vaccine as soon as possible has become a matter of public health but also of prestige for governments. 

 There is a struggle between powers not only to create the vaccine but to guarantee it first to their citizens - without a global vision - in what has been called a "vaccine nationalism.

" Behind this race there are also different visions of how the vaccine should be and a lack of health cooperation, for example between the US and China, which expresses the existing disputes in other areas between the two countries. Trump even publicly called coronarivus "the Chinese virus.

" While the governments of China and the Russian Federation have already announced that the vaccine should be put at the service of humanity, the European Union has created the "Team Europe" to provide a global response to the pandemic through cooperation with its partners. The same is being done by China and Russia bilaterally and within the BRICS. 

Two pieces of information allow us to understand the existing multipolarity, also in the pharmaceutical area. Among the world's leading millionaires, the first to appear exclusively linked to the pharmaceutical world, ranked 70, is the Chinese Zhong Huijuan. Among the top ten in the "Health" category there is only one American, Carl Cook; the rest are Asian or European. The first linked exclusively to the field of vaccines, within the health label, is the Indian Cyrus Poonawalla. In fact, India is the world's leading producer of vaccines.

 In the United States, months before the elections, Donald Trump started Operation Ward Speed ​​to finance vaccine research, in addition to obtaining medicines and diagnostic tests for the virus. The budget of more than 10 billion dollars for R&D benefited large pharmaceutical conglomerates: Moderna was the most benefited, with 2,455 million, followed by GSK Sanofi with 2,100, BioNTech Pfizer with 1,950 million, Novavax with 1,600, Johnson & Johnson with 1,456 and AstraZeneca with 1,200 million dollars. 

 

The European Union, for its part, has created, through the collaboration of the European Commission with the European Investment Bank (EIB) and a donor summit, a fund of 15.9 billion euros to "guarantee universal access to medicines against the coronavirus ”, which includes production of 250 million doses for low- and middle-income countries. The EIB has financed the pharmaceutical company BioNTech and the German Curevac vaccine, which is in phase 2. 

The EU Donors Summit was also an example of the entry of private capital to finance social policies. Among singers and other celebrities, Melinda Gates had an outstanding participation. 

 Philanthropists and the vaccine business 

Although public funding is proving essential to the vaccine race, private equity participation is playing an important role in research projects and in multilateral organizations. 

 One of the most prominent cases is that of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has become the second donor to the WHO (9.7% of the budget), behind the US The Gates are behind 7 vaccine projects, highlighting that of the University of Oxford. 

 Bill Gates, the second richest man on the planet, according to Forbes, has been warning for years of the dangers of global pandemics linked to viruses and the need to invest in vaccines, in addition to developing efforts to eradicate other diseases in Africa. 

 In the background there are several risks: the privatization of the public health agenda on a global scale, a very succulent business area under capitalism; the patrimonialization of the vaccine and financial speculation. Only the announcement of a vaccine by Pfizer raised its shares on the stock market. 

Vaccines 

 There are currently 49 candidate vaccines for clinical evaluation registered with the World Health Organization (WHO) and 164 candidates for preclinical evaluation. [1] Among the former, only 13 are already in phase 3.

In addition to these projects, the Cuban vaccine known as Soberana (01, 02, 01A) developed by the Finlay Institute within the framework of an economic blockade and currently in the experimental phase with several trials stands out due to its impact on the region. , along with two new vaccine candidates, Abdala and Mambisa, registered with the Cuban Public Registry of Clinical Trials. It should be noted that both the Finlay Institute and the Sinopharm company are state-owned.

 Novavax has announced clinical trials in the US and Mexico. Chinese Ad5-nCoV is also experienced in Mexico, Brazil, Chile or Russia. Venezuela received the Sputnik V vaccine for trials weeks ago. The Chinese CoronaVac is being tested in Brazil, Indonesia and Turkey. And Barach Biotech has offered a technology transfer agreement to Brazil, prior agreement for trials. 

It seems that the start of vaccination is almost imminent in some areas of the planet. In Europe, the European Medicines Agenda (EMA) has already announced the marketing approval of two vaccines in mid-December, Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna. And it has signed contracts with three pharmaceutical companies, including Johnson & Johnson.

 Pfizer / BioNTech has applied to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Canada, Australia and the UK for permission to use the vaccine "in emergency situations." 

. This haste on the part of the pharmaceutical companies has led Trump to declare that the pharmaceutical companies did not evaluate their vaccines in the US before to boycott their chances of re-election. A clash that also occurred months ago with the WHO.

 Latin America: Multilateral Alliances and Dependent Access to Vaccine

 Throughout these months the dependence of the majority of Latin American-Caribbean countries on foreign medical and health cooperation has been seen. In this sense, a diversification is observed that has broken ideological affinities. Central American countries close to the US, such as Honduras or El Salvador, have resorted to cooperation with the Russian Federation or Cuba. Others, such as Brazil - or, at the time, Áñez's Bolivia - have opened the door to Chinese cooperation. 

 Cuba has come to help Venezuela, expanding its health cooperation. Venezuela has received Chinese advice to combat the pandemic and has also been the first Latin American country to participate in clinical trials of the Russian vaccine. Mexico has received cooperation, but it has also exercised it towards other countries, such as Cuba. 

Cuba, however, is an exception. During the pandemic, it has sent doctors to countries in the region and Europe. In addition, it is the only Caribbean country that has a vaccine registered with the WHO, with two research projects from the Sovereign. This fact is extremely important because, furthermore, it is the only vaccine in a socialist country, with a long tradition of health and pharmaceutical cooperation. 

The distribution, at no cost to citizens, of this vaccine through cooperation agreements with regional governments, could be a way to break the hegemony that agencies such as the European and the United States are going to exercise to mark which vaccines are indicated, as well as to avoid the technological and financial dependence of the countries of the North. 

 Conclusions 

It is anticipated that the dispute to arrive earlier to a vaccine that saves humanity from this pandemic may help to consolidate global trends that highlight the displacement of the world economy to the Asia Pacific area. Hence the desire of European and American laboratories to be the first to initiate vaccination and establish their respective vaccines as the benchmark vaccines, the only ones authorized by the powerful drug agencies. 

 The role of the media in the West has tended to reinforce these efforts by focusing the debate on the possibilities of vaccination of Western drugs, giving less coverage to non-Westerners, questioning the scientific reliability of other vaccines, such as the Russian one, or speaking information theft by Russia and other countries. 

 It seems clear that if China, the country of origin of the coronavirus, manages to get a vaccine before any country, it will exercise a symbolic compensation and will be placed in a situation of world domination, also due to its mass production capacity and the focus of a distribution humanist.

 The alliances that Latin America and the Caribbean have established for medical and health cooperation during the pandemic can work in their favor to access a vaccine at less cost to the respective governments. In addition, they are an example of the growing multilateralism of international relations and of the greater presence and influence of China in the Latin American-Caribbean subcontinent. Faced with this situation, both the US and Europe are expected to lobby strongly in favor of their laboratories. The "relief" generated among the world establishment at the election of Biden illustrates the expectations that the United States will regain its leadership to save capitalism in its neoliberal phase and the associated "globalism", ultimately, to save West.