Omicron’s rapid and relentless advance across continents proves once again that a global pandemic requires a global plan of attack. Yet almost two years into the Covid-19 pandemic the world remains in a perilous position. The diplomatic landscape is littered with unfulfilled pledges and unrealized targets, while the trajectory of the pandemic remains unchanged – despite the fact that we have a new and highly transmissible variant before us and the tools and know how to successfully combat it.
The best defense against Covid-19 — including Omicron and potential future variants — is rapid, widespread, and equitable vaccination combined with additional evidence based public health measures. Timely, predictable access to vaccines still remains a major challenge for many low- and lower-middle income countries. While many countries are managing to organize vaccination campaigns quickly as supply ramps up, in some countries increasing supply is highlighting critical bottlenecks to getting vaccines from airports to arms, including distribution, delivery, and demand generation challenges.
Converting vaccines to vaccinations is becoming the key to winning the race between vaccines and variants and to end the pandemic. By urgently addressing cross-cutting and technical barriers to vaccination and empowering country-level leadership and decision-making, stakeholders at national, regional, and global levels can collaborate more effectively to help end the pandemic – everywhere. By urgently addressing cross-cutting and technical barriers to vaccination and empowering country-level leadership and decision-making, stakeholders at national, regional, and global levels can collaborate more effectively to help end the pandemic – everywhere.