Paris (AFP)

Faced with the pandemic, every man for himself?

At the Davos Virtual Forum, Brussels lobbied laboratories to receive the promised vaccines, while South Africa worried that rich countries grab the precious vials.

While the bar of 100 million cases of Covid-19 in the world is about to be exceeded, and even if the official speeches within the framework of the annual meeting of the world political and economic elite advocate cooperation, in fact, the richest countries have taken a head start in the vaccination race.

Beneficiaries of massive investments from the European Union, the manufacturers of anti-Covid vaccines "must now keep their promises and honor their obligations", warned the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday.

"Europe has invested billions to develop the first vaccines and create a real global common good", she recalled in a video intervention - pandemic obliges, the World Economic Forum deserted this year the wealthy Swiss ski resort from Davos.

- "Vaccine nationalism" -

"We are going to set up a transparency mechanism on vaccine exports," aimed at identifying the delivery outside the EU of doses produced in Europe, recalled the head of the European executive on Tuesday in her speech.

Before emphasizing that Brussels was helping to promote the deployment of vaccination on a global scale.

"Due to planetary production chains, the health of our citizens and the global economic recovery go hand in hand (...) In the Covax alliance, the EU together with 186 states will secure millions of doses for countries low-income, ”she said.

Promises that are not enough so far to reassure the least developed countries.

Also invited to speak at the World Economic Forum, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said: "The rich countries of the world are monopolizing these vaccines."

Poor countries are sidelined by those who can afford "up to four times what their people need," he added.

These accusations echo repeated warnings from the World Health Organization (WHO) against "vaccine nationalism".

"Vaccine nationalism can serve short-term political objectives, but it is in the medium and long-term economic interest of each nation to support vaccine equity," its director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insisted on Monday.

"Until we end the pandemic everywhere, we will not end it," he said.

Officially the most affected country on the African continent, South Africa will pay for its first vaccines, acquired through direct negotiations between the government and the AstraZeneca laboratory, 2.5 times more expensive than the countries of the European Union.

- "Vaccine panic" -

Because of the new variants, "currently, a vaccine panic" has gripped the world, said epidemiologist Seth Berkley, who heads the Alliance for Vaccines (Gavi), at another roundtable. organizations trying to ensure delivery of doses to disadvantaged countries.

"We will start distributing the vaccines in February and ramp up to try to reach our goal of 2 billion doses by the end of the year," he confirmed.

In a study commissioned by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), epidemiologists calculate that even if advanced economies vaccinate their populations, the costs they would incur due to their interdependence could range from 200 to 4.500 billion dollars if countries the least developed do not have access to vaccines.

"It is much more than the 38 billion dollars that it would cost to manufacture and distribute vaccines on an international scale", according to this document which associates the coldness of the economic calculation with the ethical arguments in favor of universal access vaccines.

burs-aue / evs / pcm

© 2021 AFP