Omicron backlash

WHO chief: Omicron backlash against Africa shows why world needs pandemic treaty

Countries are disincentivized from reporting health threats, says Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

BY ASHLEIGH FURLONG

It's time for a new pandemic treaty, the chief of the World Health Organization said on Monday.

The emergence of the new Omicron coronavirus variant amid vaccine inequity and the rapid imposition of travel bans on southern African nations “demonstrates just why the world needs a new accord on pandemics,” said WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, at a special session of the World Health Assembly.

Countries are gathering at the session where they will agree to start negotiations on a pandemic treaty. There was concern that opposition from the U.S. and several other countries to the agreement being legally binding, could have forestalled an agreement. However, on Sunday, countries reached consensus on a compromise text that will be adopted during the ongoing World Health Assembly.

Tedros told delegates that the current system “disincentivizes countries from alerting others to threats that will inevitably land on their shores” and that “South Africa and Botswana should be thanked for detecting, sequencing and reporting this variant — not penalized.” 

The Omicron variant was first detected in southern Africa, but has since been identified in multiple countries around the world including several European nations. Many have slapped travel bans on southern African countries, which some scientists say will prove ineffectual at slowing the spread of the variant and unfairly punishes the countries that were quick to report cases of the new variant. 

The WHO has said that travel restrictions “may play a role in slightly reducing the spread of COVID-19 but place a heavy burden on lives and livelihoods.” Speaking on Sunday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that travel bans enforced by the EU, U.K. and U.S., among others, were “completely unjustified and unfairly discriminate against our country and our southern African sister countries.” 

While the exact terms of a future pandemic treaty are still to be hammered out, one aspect that it is expected to cover is the rapid sharing of information about health crises. During a WHO working group on a future treaty, countries expressed support for improving efforts to detect and share information on outbreaks and pointed to the need to develop appropriate incentives for sharing pathogens or genetic information.

Another aspect of the treaty would likely be equitable access to medical countermeasures, an issue raised by European Council President Charles Michel in his remarks Monday. Michel, who first proposed a pandemic treaty a year ago, said that equitable access to tools like vaccines needs to be ensured for future pandemics. “We simply cannot allow the same inequality we have seen and continue to see to repeat itself in future pandemics. That is why we must act,” he said. 

Many experts have said that the identification of the variant in Africa should serve as a warning about the risk of vaccine inequity. Only around 6 percent of the African population is fully vaccinated, according to the Africa CDC. While South Africa currently has sufficient availability of vaccines and is instead struggling with vaccine uptake, some other southern African countries don’t have enough supply.

“The emergence of the Omicron variant has fulfilled, in a precise way, the predictions of the scientists who warned that the elevated transmission of the virus in areas with limited access to vaccines would speed its evolution," Richard Hatchett, CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, told the World Health Assembly. "The virus is a ruthless opportunist and the inequity that has characterized the global response has now come home to roost."