VATICAN (CNS): Getting the the Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) “is not a competition, because if I arrive first and the other doesn’t arrive, it doesn’t work,” Father Augusto Zampini, adjunct secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and a member of the commission’s directorate, said, adding that the only ethical and practical response to Covid-19 (pandemic is solidarity, not competition—including when it comes to the vaccines.
Father Zampini noted that most scientists agree that to protect everyone, at least 70 per cent of the population would need to be vaccinated or to have had Covid-19 and recovered.
The need to develop and widely distribute vaccines for Covid-19 is the perfect example of how prioritising solidarity serves the common good, a lesson Catholic social teaching has been promoting for decades, Father Zampini said.
He remarked that the global spread of the pandemic has shown the need for global vaccination, and that it is not enough that a few wealthier countries vaccinate 70 per cent of their populations because the virus does not stop at the borders.
“If one person is not safe, nobody is safe,” Father Zampini stressed, adding that even if the vaccines are expensive, they are the most cost-effective way to end the pandemic and the billions of dollars it is costing the world in health care, job losses, production slowdowns and other economic consequences.
“If one person is not safe, nobody is safe,” Father Zampini stressed, adding that even if the vaccines are expensive, they are the most cost-effective way to end the pandemic and the billions of dollars it is costing the world in health care, job losses, production slowdowns and other economic consequences.
Father Zampini said that the Vatican is calling for universal access to the vaccines with a special emphasis on vaccinating the poor, the elderly, migrants and other vulnerable populations often left out of public health care programs “because this is a case where, if we don’t vaccinate everybody, it won’t work.”
The pope, the Vatican Covid-19 Commission, the Vatican Secretariat of State and its representatives, Caritas Internationalis and the Pontifical Academy for Life also have been calling for an easing of patent protections so that internationally approved Covid-19 vaccines can be made less expensively in multiple facilities around the world and delivered quickly to nearby populations.
Patents are necessary to motivate and reward research, innovation, creativity and investment, Father Zampini said, “but now what we need is an urgent innovation for the common good.”
He said that if most of the money invested in the vaccine development “is public money,” which it was, then the vaccine should be considered “a public good” and not simply a product to be sold.
The world has experienced pandemics before, “but never one like this that affected so much every single country in the world and every single person on the planet,” he said. Property rights must be protected, but the international community has other goods to protect as well—the life and health of its people, first of all.
But the Vatican Covid-19 Commission’s goal is not simply “vaccination for all,” he said. “The aim is a healthier planet where we can have healthy people and healthy institutions.”
The pandemic “is a very serious crisis related to public health, geopolitics, economics, jobs, climate change,” education and more, Father Zampini said.
He said that the commission, which is in constant dialogue with health care experts, dioceses and religious congregations around the world, is also trying to help by developing educational material explaining Covid-19 and the vaccines, including the Catholic Church’s judgment regarding the morality of their production.
Father Zampini said that with the local communities’ trust and their vast local networks, , Catholic and other religious leaders and organisations have a big role to play assuaging fears and convincing people that getting vaccinated is good for them and for their neighbours.
