Global co-operation is needed to beat the virus

The politicians and business people who attend the World Economic Forum in Davos are always accused of being out of touch. This week the WEF’s annual meeting was held online. Relocating from the Swiss mountains to cyber space only added an extra layer of unreality to the deliberations.

The impressive array of world leaders who spoke to the forum were almost united in calling for increased international co-operation, in response to Covid-19. President Xi Jinping of China appealed for multilateralism to “light our way”. Emmanuel Macron, president of France, called for “efficient multilateralism”. President Vladimir Putin of Russia warned against the pandemic leading to a struggle of “all against all”.

Such calls for international unity are sadly at odds with developments in the real world. Even as EU leaders called for co-operation in the face of the pandemic, the bloc is mulling an export ban for Covid-19 vaccines. The struggle for vaccines threatens to pit wealthy neighbours, such as the UK and the EU, against each other.

Many poorer countries are anxious that they are falling victim to what Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa, called “vaccine nationalism” — in which richer countries hoard vaccines for their own populations. The World Health Organization has expressed similar concerns.

It is easy, and often justifiable, to accuse world leaders of hypocrisy —mouthing pieties about multilateralism, while putting their own countries first. But governments also face a real problem. Leaders may understand intellectually that the pandemic is a global problem that can only be truly defeated globally. But they are under intense political pressure to make their own citizens their top priority.

The problem is that even the countries that are fastest to vaccinate, will feel the effects of slower rollouts elsewhere. António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, told the Financial Times this week that delaying vaccine supplies to the “Global South” will make it more likely that the virus mutates, rendering current vaccines ineffective.

Mr Guterres wants the rich world to increase funding for Covax, the multilateral initiative that is buying vaccines for poorer nations but has a $6.8bn shortfall for this year alone. He also suggests that richer nations should be willing to transfer vaccines elsewhere, once they have jabbed the most vulnerable sections of their populations.

The idea that richer nations should send some vaccines overseas, when large parts of their own population have yet to benefit from them, will be a tough sell politically. But it makes economic as well as moral sense.

One of the great hopes associated with the vaccine drive is that it will allow life to return to normal. But it is striking that frontrunners in the vaccine race, including the UK and Israel, are tightening their border controls, fearing that otherwise they may import new variants of Covid — and return to square one. Without a global rollout of vaccines, the success of national vaccine drives could lead to increased autarky, rather than openness. That, in turn, would leave international trade in the doldrums. A report for the WHO suggested this week that developed nations will face losses equivalent to 3.5 per cent of pre-pandemic output if the global rollout of vaccines continues at its current pace.

Economic and social life will not return to normal in rich countries as long as the pandemic is still raging elsewhere in the world. Appeals for a multilateral approach to Covid-19 are not just pieties for a Davos audience. They point to a real truth about the battle to end the pandemic.