Omicron variant threatens Omicron: campaign

Failure to vaccine the world against coronaviruses created a perfect breeding ground for the emergence of the Omicron variant and should serve as a wake-up call to wealthy nations, campaigners said.

Since the summer, scientists and global health experts have called for action to address the crisis of vaccine inequality between rich and poor countries. The longer large parts of the world remained unvaccinated, the more likely the virus would mutate, they said.

The emergence of such a variant threatens to derail efforts to end the epidemic. The heavily mutated Omicron variant is likely to spread internationally and poses a very high risk of infection surges that may have serious consequences in some places, according to the World Health Organization.

Omicron is with us because we have failed to vaccine the world, said Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of UNAids and co-chair of the People's Vaccine Alliance. This should be a wake-up call.

Business as usual has resulted in huge profits for pharmaceutical firms, but many people left unvaccinated means this virus continues to mutate. It is a definition of madness to keep doing the same thing and expect a different outcome. The People's Vaccine Alliance released new figures showing that the number of booster or third jabs administered in the UK is about the same as the total number of fully vaccinated people in all of the world's poorest countries.

The UK has reached the milestone of 20 m booster vaccines or third doses administered days after ministers announced a significant expansion of the programme to every adult in the country. According to the People's Vaccine Alliance figures, only 20 million people in all 27 countries classified as low-income nations have been fully vaccinated, according to Our World In Data.

Anna Marriott, health policy manager at Oxfam, said with the new threat of the Omicron variant, it is clear that we can't just boost our way out of the pandemic while leaving much of the developing world behind. Unless all countries are vaccinated as soon as possible, we could see wave after wave of variants.

We cannot correct the mistakes of the past 21 months but we need rich countries to chart a new path forward in which they step up and demand that pharmaceutical companies share their science and technology with qualified manufacturers around the world, so we can end the pandemic in all countries. Tony Blair said that if you don't vaccinate the world, this is a virus that can mutate, the failure to organise mass vaccination around the world has been a huge problem. If you have large populations that are unvaccinated, it is likely that it will mutate faster and further.