A new coronavirus variant, named B.1.1.529, is spreading rapidly in southern Africa. It could be the nightmare result of vaccine inequality.
As of Thursday, 23.51% of people in South Africa and 19.58% in Botswana have been fully vaccinated, Our World in DataA graph showing the vaccine rates of South Africa and Botswana compared to many of the world's wealthiest countries.This means the nightmare scenario could be arriving in just the way experts have warned about.
Ken Shadlen, a professor of development studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science,in March that if global vaccine inequality persisted, "it's going to potentially undermine the health benefits of all that we're doing with lockdowns and vaccines." He said it wasn't inevitable that a vaccine-escaping variant would emerge if the virus kept spreading, but that "it would take a lot of confidence to believe that it's not going to, if it keeps spreading."
Dr. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota who advised Joe Biden on COVID-19 during his presidential transition, expressed the same concerns to Insider in March. He said that efforts to end the pandemic would be difficult if there was a "largely uncontrolled transmission in the low- and middle-income countries," even if the world's richest nations had done widespread vaccinations.
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