 Hello and welcome to Newsclick. Today we have with us Professor Satyajit Rat and we are going to discuss what has become a hot topic internationally, vaccines and travel. Some countries have decided what vaccines are okay for travel and what vaccines are not. India's co-vaccine seems to be something which a lot of countries do not seem to want. We earlier had the same issue with the Chinese and American British European vaccines. China said it only recognizes its own vaccines and of course other countries did not recognize the Chinese vaccines. Satyajit, how do we solve the problem of vaccine recognition, particularly in view of the fact that WHO does not seem to have recognized a number of vaccines which are also being widely used. Co-vaccine being only one of them but also for instance putnik V as we now know it is called not putnik V. So what is the way forward? So I am afraid that from being ostensibly a problem of science and technology this has really become a problem of politics and bureaucracy. The WHO's failure to recognize some vaccines is driven largely by a slow creaking bureaucracy that tends to play very cautious. This is not to imply that the WHO is not amenable to political pressure, it certainly is. But nonetheless I think that the primary difficulty in the WHO's case of non-inclusion of some vaccines is to do with the creaking bureaucracy. On the other hand, the decisions by the global north or more correctly by individual countries of the global north in deciding some cherry-picked list of favored vaccines seems to be far more a matter of political friends and non-friends and of unregarded people such as the UK and Covishield than a matter of science and technology or indeed even of properly speaking bureaucracy. The cause that is going to be given has in fact been indicated is that their national regulatory agencies have not recognized these vaccines and therefore they are unable to recognize those countries. Even Covishield is it? I thought only Covaxin was what the UK didn't recognize. Well, the UK's non-recognition of Covishield as many Indian political figures have indicated is an even greater oddity since it does seem to have some recognition of Covishield at the regulatory level. So, you know, we are going to get into a discussion of politics really properly speaking and at that level I would like to point out something. No country in the world is currently permitting unrestricted travel of any sort. No tourist visas are being given out and ordinarily are not being welcomed for travel. The International Air Travel Association is holding all ordinary commercial flights across the world in suspension. There are maybe half a dozen countries which are actually giving out and welcoming tourists in, there are countries in Persian Gulf, in West Asia who have begun it and in part are driven by local expos and so on and so forth. But by and large international travel is still shut down. All this conversation that's going on is about exceptions. Okay. That needs to be kept in mind. We should also keep in mind that these permissions are connected to not just vaccination but RTPC are based testing a couple of days before the date of travel and a commitment to do another test of some sort a couple of days later after arrival in the country. So all of this is an extremely slow, uncertain, cautious opening of international travel and it's not an ordinary opening of international travel. And I think that when we discuss the inevitable look down from the global north to the global south, we should keep this context in mind. But it's also interesting that in the European Union, the UK and the United States, there's a lot of bad blood taking place. Who recognizes whose vaccines and whose vaccines are not being recognized? And the US seems to be particularly at fault according to Europeans that while they have accepted American tourists, American visits, the Americans don't even seem to accept the UK that their people coming in is also not welcome. Concentrating the US numbers in terms of people who are down with COVID-19 is still very high. It's one of the highest in the world still. So this seems to be again more parochial treatment. My, you know, infected are okay but yours are not kind of scenario. Of course. Not simply that, not simply the simple xenophobia of my infected are okay but you are infected or not. But the xenophobia of hierarchies where the infected from some countries are more okay than the infected from other countries. That clearly we have established that apart from the European Union and maybe now that Australia is buying submarines from the United States, maybe they will get an exception but not in France. But otherwise the global south as you said, essentially Africa, Asia, large parts of Asia, most of Asia in any case. And of course, even Latin America will be out of reckoning in terms of the vaccine passports, so to say. But there is really no way that we are going to get an international agreement of say vaccine passports at the moment because there is neither in the tourist or the aircraft, airlines kind of agencies or in WHO, there is really a discussion of what to do with travel. So Prabir, this is, I agree but let me put it in a broader context of the conversations that we've been having on this forum for the past year. There is no global unified strategic or tactical policy approach to the pandemic at all. The WHO is essentially a Cassandra voice crying in the wilderness despite all its creaky bureaucracy and its caution and this, that and the other. This is where we've come where the WHO is the Cassandra. The COVAX initiative is, has gone nowhere in terms of the number commitments that it has made. I am all supportive of the COVAX initiative even in its extraordinarily reduced state because it's doing something. But clearly even the modest numbers that it had originally envisaged have not been held to in terms of tangential use. There has been no, as I have said endless times, there has been no commitment to global vaccine trials, to comparative vaccine trials, to global comparative vaccine trial based acceptable regulatory agreements about COVID vaccines. And if none of that has happened, it's no great surprise that international air travel has been subjected to the same hierarchical parochial xenophobic policy approaches as everything else has been. That's a very important point you're making that we cannot think of air travel in isolation from the larger public health issue which the pandemic has thrown up. And the key problem has been we have no international approach to the pandemic. What we have had is national approaches which make some lip service to internationalism if you will and WHO co-vaccine platform if you will. But in reality it has been me first, the devil of the pandemic take the hindmost. That has been really the way it has gone. And it's also interesting that we are now talking of booster doses for people above 50, people above X. We can booster dose on demand kind of policies being talked about in the global north, European Union, the UK and the United States. I'm not counting the small islands in Australia into this. But if you take that into account that you really have a policy of me first in all of these countries. And of course the countries like India which have followed this policy as well after a certain point. This has affected most of course Africa which is lagging well behind even the public health system has not been vaccinated in large in the number of countries. So that's really where the danger lies. And of course Latin America is a little better because they have more money if you will to get vaccines and they have had some access therefore. But it is really this public health failure and the international level which is at the cause of what we are seeing. So let me extend that argument a little bit and point out that one of the issues that we've discussed previously is the fact that we have allowed covid vaccines to be part of a private sector pharmaceutical company competitive market landscape. As a consequence, now that's not surprising given all the other choices that we have made as the world under those circumstances it's completely unsurprising that extraordinarily peculiar efforts begin to be made. Let me give you an example of the kind that you're talking about on the one hand we are talking about booster doses and the booster doses that are being discussed are not simply booster doses. They are not simply booster doses in the global north at the cost of vaccine supplies to the global south in countries such as India. There is a growing constituency of support for booster doses amongst people who are fortunate enough to have had their two doses already six months ago and who for a variety of reasons are anxious correctly some cases incorrectly in other cases. And for whom the argument begins to be 25% of the vaccine supply in India is supposed to come through the private sector. I can afford a third dose. Why are you not giving me the third dose? And that if you like is an in country configuration of the exact same international scenario that we are discussing of a hierarchy of interests. That brings us to the point which perhaps we should take up in our next discussion but we can touch upon it briefly here that according to what you have been saying in this discussions with news click. All vaccines have proved to be reasonably successful even in spite of the fact we don't have international trials. They are all to the good and we hope that in the future we shall be able to develop you know improved varieties of vaccines to combat the pandemic. What is lacking is essentially a public health approach and none of this so-called patents not being considered for the duration of the pandemic has gone anywhere. If you look at it, Biden made a lip service announcement that the US would back off from saying no patents for the pandemic but the intellectual property right regime has effectively prevented any transfer of technology to the countries that did it most. Particularly even of vaccines which do not need a very high technology setup. This is the other side of you know the private health approach and profit being made of the pandemic which is really going to hurt all countries and all economies and of course the global economy. Because the pandemic will only continue and if new country new variants emerge it can again you know damage whatever little we have gained. So let me make in this context in the context of the issues you raise two points one a technological issue and one an epidemiological issue and let me start with the epidemiological issue where advisory committees in Israel in various countries in Europe in North America are advising booster vaccination third dose vaccination based on data that even protection from serious illness and death that was seen to be very very high in the early months of vaccination is waning you are seeing we are seeing headlines immunity by vaccination is waning and that is why the third dose the booster dose is being advised as a matter of public policy and I would like to point out that the waning levels are still in the 80 85 90 plus percent categories. So are we seeing waning yes a little bit are those waning numbers such that we should withdraw vaccines from people who have not gotten even a single dose and should put them into third dose vaccination programs. I don't think so I think that this is an example where perfectly legitimate epidemiological evidence is being used to in support of hierarchical approaches to policy. Or parochial approaches or parochial approaches yes I'm sort of making a larger point about hierarchies but the technological point I would like to bring up is the issue that there is a there is there is supposed to be an Africa hub for transfer of technology and building an African source to manifest filling and finishing and then a manufacturer. Now the filling and finishing is a little bit further ahead the manufacturer is lagging behind but the extraordinary Alice through the looking glass world sense that you get is both of these efforts of making Africa are being driven by Bionic Pfizer on the one hand at the filling and finishing level and Moderna on the other hand. And both of these vaccines are RNA vaccines and RNA vaccines require ultra low temperature storage. It's not at all clear that actual vaccination campaign conditions in Africa are going to be able to provide reliable robust sustainable ultra low temperature storage. And yet the Africa hub of COVID vaccines appears to consist of RNA vaccines even via the WHO. And the kind of Alice through the looking glass world that we have come to over the past year. I mean one can be cynical and say because the American companies like BioNTech and Pfizer mRNA also Moderna they are running out of even the third booster dose in terms of few people they can vaccinate. Therefore are looking to market they can capture even if it means the urban rich of Africa if you will who can maybe maybe afford this vaccines. Thank you very much Satyajit for bringing out what happens when public health versus private greed is put at cross purposes and what we are seeing as vaccine passports and all this what appear to be on the face of it really irrational public health disease. These decisions are being driven by the logic of private greed and not a public health. This is all the time we have today for discussing with you what are the implications of COVID-19 pandemic and how do you fight it. Do keep watching news click and do visit our website and support us in various ways.