Omicron: International travel restrictions criticised by expert

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The former prime minister has criticised Boris Johnson for a false claim that low take-up of jabs, rather than a shortage, is to blame for a lack of protection in countries with the new Omicron variant.

In an article for The Independent, Mr Brown calls on Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, the chief medical and scientific officers, to “sit Johnson down” and make him understand “basic medical facts”.

They are that South Africa and Botswana have administered a “far higher” proportion of their does than Western nations however that effort is crippled by “broken promises” by rich countries to share more jabs.

He says that the UK was already lagging behind the EU and US by pledging only 100 million doses, but has released only 11 percent of that total in the five months since.

Mr Brown writes that such delays are “leaving all of us at risk when – through no fault of their own – a number of countries have become spaces for outbreaks of new variants of the virus”.

Further, he urges Professor Whitty and Sir Patrick to “make clear that in all our interests he changes course in the way he is treating Africa”.

A failure to do so “will not just put Christmas 2021 at risk but may leave us facing similar problems of a half-vaccinated world next year – and even next Christmas,” the former Labour leader has written.

In addition many experts have also claimed that Coronavirus vaccines need to be donated to Africa in a more “predictable and reliable” way as current efforts to export doses to the continent have been criticised as being too “ad hoc”.

In the article, Mr Brown, now the World Health Organisation ambassador for global health financing, quotes a warning from the Africa Union’s Vaccine Delivery Alliance co-chair.

Ayoade Alaki said, of the arrival of Omicron: “What is going on right now is inevitable, it’s a result of the world’s failure to vaccinate in an equitable, urgent and speedy manner.

“It is as a result of vaccine hoarding by high-income countries of the world, and quite frankly it is unacceptable.”

Mr Brown writes: “Not for the first time, Johnson has shown a casual disregard for the facts. But this time his erroneous claims – and the result – a longer-term failure to speed up the delivery of unused COVID-19 vaccines to Africa, is putting lives at risk not only in Africa but round the world.

“Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, our well-respected chief medical and scientific advisers, should sit Boris Johnson down and acquaint him with some basic medical facts.”

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The World Health Organisation (WHO), the African Union, Unicef, GAVI, the vaccine alliance and the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have issued a joint statement calling on countries to commit to a new set of standards when donating Covid vaccines, Inews reports.

It comes as the WHO’s director-general warns vaccine equity is needed to end this global health crisis.

They wrote: “The majority of the donations to-date have been ad hoc, provided with little notice and short shelf lives.

“This has made it extremely challenging for countries to plan vaccination campaigns and increase absorptive capacity.

“Countries need predictable and reliable supply.

“Having to plan at short notice and ensure uptake of doses with short shelf lives exponentially magnifies the logistical burden on health systems that are already stretched.”

As a result, the group of experts call on “the international community, particularly donors and manufacturers” to commit to a new set of standards from the beginning of 2022.

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