This is the question that has been haunting me since the coronavirus was declared a pandemic by WHO. All the countries around the world took strict precautionary measures like imposing nationwide lockdown, closing all the airports, testing at various checkpoints, utilizing full diplomatic channels for bringing their citizens back home, etc.
But still, even with all our efforts, we have lost 2.33 lakh people worldwide so far. The situation is still uncertain; even the powerful nations who were proud of their technological advancements are worst affected with the most number of fatalities (crossed 60,000).
We can slow the spread of the virus by imposing lockdown and other social distancing measures, but the final solution to this virus is the vaccine which we don’t have at this moment.
Some of the scientists and the major drug manufacturing companies have already said that they will be able to start the production of the vaccine only after January 2021. We can imagine its economic implications as well as the loss of precious lives that will incur between these long periods of time.
Then, what is the way out of it?
The only way out was that countries around the world join hands together and make the COVID-19 vaccine as early as possible. It would have saved a lot of time and thus saving precious lives if they had worked together. Time is what we don’t have at this moment; every single day people are dying to this virus.
But unfortunately, countries are busy in the race of trying to make it first and earn a monopoly over the whole drug market and earn huge profits out of it.
Around 80 different companies and research institutes are in that race to find the vaccine.
This work of uniting the top countries against the virus was of World Health Organization (WHO) but if we see there press conferences and their top officials on Twitter, I feel they are just working as a puppet of China; defending China has become their only work.
There is an immense need to save time and resources, and the need of the hour is to work with synergy and efficiency. Our every step should be to move collectively towards the goal, that is to find the vaccine, not trying it differently.
I hope they will pay heed to this and try to save lives which we will be losing to the virus in the coming months.