Vaccine Diplomacy Part i

With the coronavirus affecting countries around the world, some leaders are taking it upon themselves to better their relations with other places by offering aid during this unfortunate time. As a result, vaccine diplomacy has been popular recently. Many developed countries are reaching out to underdeveloped countries with vaccine doses, or helping countries who don’t have vaccine doses and giving them ones that they can spare. India, China, and the United States of America are all participating in vaccine diplomacy with countries around the world. (But we’ll be just talking about China and India who have a greater impact around the world whereas the US has just recently started to take part). Let’s now talk about what vaccine diplomacy is and the different countries taking part in it.

First of all, what exactly is vaccine diplomacy? Vaccine diplomacy is a country’s way of improving its relationship with other countries, or being able to influence them. They do this by giving them vaccine doses that they have produced, or have extra of. Vaccine diplomacy wasn’t only recently created to share Covid-19 vaccines, it had been used before for the sharing of smallpox vaccines as well. Vaccine diplomacy is especially beneficial for the developed countries because they are able to buy lots of doses, only to share them with other countries. By sharing them with other countries, they are able to form stronger relations than there had been previously, so as a result, the countries that are able to afford to buy lots of vaccine doses are the ones at advantage in vaccine diplomacy.

There are multiple countries taking part in vaccine diplomacy, China, and India being the main ones. India produces a lot of pharmaceutical goods, so they are able to give other countries vaccines. According to “COVID vaccines: India and China’s new diplomatic currency” by the Atlantic Council - a place where people all over the world are able to give their opinion on the current political and business happening around the world - the Serum Institute of India produces 2.5 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines a day, which helps them to be able to reach more countries to aid. Unfortunately, India’s coronavirus cases are going up so they are focusing on the people within their borders resulting in allowing no vaccines to be shipped out. Some countries have relationships with multiple other vaccine distributing countries, Seychelles in particular has relationships with China and India so those two countries supply Seychelles with vaccines.

China at this time is using vaccines to better their relations with other countries and to expand their influence. They have promised many Southeast Asian countries to give them thousands of doses of vaccines in turn for the completion of their projects that the Chinese have funded under their China’s Belt and Road Initiative (a strategy that the Chinese government came up with to finance 70 countries). They haven’t just promised countries under their Belt and Road Initiative, they have also reached out to countries who would like vaccinations and would also like to be a part of their financing strategy. Vaccine diplomacy doesn’t just mean improving relations with other countries, it also means being able to influence them or willing to help them out in different aspects (like infrastructure).

With the idea of vaccine diplomacy being more popular these days, it is easier to imagine a future where the coronavirus will be a distant thought. Now that countries are working together to help each other out to increase vaccinations, more people will be able to protect themselves from the different variants and experiencing deadly cases. That is positive news that is greatly needed in a dark time like this. With the pandemic raging on for more than a year now, we must still stay vigilant in our safety practices of wearing a mask and staying six feet apart before everyone will have a dose of the vaccine and herd immunity will be developed for the ones that are not eligible.

Until next time, Keerthana

Sources:

1. Welcome to the age of vaccine diplomacy

2. COVID vaccines: India and China's new diplomatic currency

3. Banyan - India and China are finding vaccine diplomacy tricky | Asia | The Economist