IMF: World Needs to Move from ‘Vaccine-Only’ to More Resilient ‘Vaccine-Plus’ Approach to COVID-19
Rwanda, Africa
A volunteer helps a woman fill out paperwork before her COVID-19 vaccine in Rwanda.

Although the world is facing multiple simultaneous challenges including the war in Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic is not over and it is essential for countries to invest in systems to address this pandemic as well as future pandemic threats.

This is a key message of a new International Monetary Fund (IMF) paper, which is calling for an investment of $15-billion this year and $10-billion per year in future to fight COVID and other pandemics, as well as strengthening health systems. 

Gita Gopinath, the IMF’s First Deputy Managing Director, said that these figures pale in comparison to the cost of COVID-19 the world economies, estimated to have reached $13.8 trillion by January. 

Gopinath was speaking at the launch of an IMF paper published on Tuesday in partnership with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the Global Fund, and Wellcome Trust, which calls for a more comprehensive and integrated pandemic response from the international community.

“It is now clear that COVID-19 is likely to be with us for the long-term. Given the many possible scenarios for the evolution of COVID-19, from benign to severe scenarios, and given the limited resources countries have, we need a new strategy,” said Gopinath, adding that the focus could no longer be only COVID-19 alone – or vaccines alone.

“Countries need a more comprehensive COVID-19 toolkit for fighting the pandemic that includes vaccines, tests, treatments – and bolstering the resilience of health systems so they are in a better position to tackle both COVID-19 and other deadly diseases in a sustainable, effective way.”

Vaccination plateauing, Africa lacks absorption capacity

Gopinath conceded that over 100 countries are not on track to get to 70% vaccine coverage by the middle of this year, including the United States, which is plateauing at 65%.

“Many other countries, including African nations, are plateauing at much, much lower numbers. And we know that the Africa Centre for Disease Control has also called for a halt to sending vaccines because they are facing absorption capacity and vaccine hesitancy,” said Gopinath.

Peter Sands, Executive Director of the Global Fund, said that while vaccines have been, and remain, our most powerful weapon in the fight against COVID 19, the world needs a more comprehensive response. 

“The inequities in vaccine distribution have actually been exceeded by the inequities in, say testing, or the provision of oxygen. And we now have the prospect of novel antivirals that could also have a very significant impact on mortality,” said Sands.

“The advantage of moving from vaccine-only or very heavily vaccine approach to one which is kind of vaccine-plus, with a great with more emphasis on these other aspects of the response, is that it’s more resilient. It gives you better ability to detect variants, and also more resistant to different types of variants that might evolve,” said Sands.

However, vaccination of the most vulnerable people was of “utmost importance” – but there are “no silver bullets”, and a multi-pronged approach, Gopinath stressed.

The IMF has indicated that it is considering establishing a Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST) to provide affordable long-term financing to support countries as they tackle structural challenges, including pandemic preparedness.

One in 12 Londoners have COVID

Wellcome Trust director Jeremy Farrar said that one in 12 people in London were infected with COVID-19, and the pandemic was clearly far from over.

“We have many parts of the world without access to vaccines, and we have many parts of the world where transmission remains very, very high. That throws up the possibility of new variants that will escape our current vaccination and current immunity,” said Farrar.

“The actions that we take now, the reforms that we put in place, the financial support we give, will enable a pandemic and its acute phase to come to an end quicker and allow all our societies, all of our economies to get back on track faster,” he added, warning that without an adequate response, COVID-19 would “continue to reverberate and disrupt the whole of societies for many, many years to come”.

Farrar said that the “last thing” that should happen is for vaccine manufacturing capacity to be scaled down.

Image Credits: WHO.

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