‘We are not safe until we are all safe’: Brigham and Women’s doctor sounds alarm on COVID-19 spike in India
Infectious disease experts have called for urgent attention to global vaccine inequities.
Dr. Abraar Karan is issuing a stark warning to the world as India experiences a devastating spike in COVID-19 cases.
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The nation is adding more than 250,000 new cases daily, accounting for about one in every three new cases of the virus globally, according to the Washington Post. Experts are predicting the country’s daily new number could rise to 500,000 in the next month, with new variants and behavior changes driving the wave of infections. Hospitals and crematoriums alike are overrun in the country, according to the Post.
“This doesn’t need to be explained— this is a crisis & the world will feel the effects of this,” Karan wrote in response to a graph of the rise in cases in India. “We are not safe until we are all safe. Pushing for 100% vaccination as a goal in the US & other wealthy countries while vulnerable *high risk* people in other countries are facing deadly #covid19 surges without access to vaccines is not only immoral— it will be a serious problem for the world.”
This doesn’t need to be explained— this is a crisis & the world will feel the effects of this. We are not safe until we are all safe. #covid19 https://t.co/EPHm4FWUbr
— Abraar Karan (@AbraarKaran) April 20, 2021
3/ Again — this—> if we in US/Europe are serious about global health, it cannot only be at our convenience. #covid19 @NPRGoatsandSoda https://t.co/5S5YvPrxFJ pic.twitter.com/CrExyS180K
— Abraar Karan (@AbraarKaran) April 20, 2021
The Brigham and Women’s doctor wrote in an op-ed for NPR that if the United States and Europe are “serious” about global health, it cannot be practiced only at the Western countries’ convenience, a reality the coronavirus pandemic has only underscored and is being highlighted by countries pushing for 100 percent vaccination over ensuring true global vaccine equity.
Sharing my new piece in @npr @NPRGoatsandSoda — the hypocrisy of the global health “experience”https://t.co/5S5YvP9Wh9
— Abraar Karan (@AbraarKaran) April 18, 2021
Karan is not alone in sounding the alarm over global vaccine inequities. Last month, dozens of doctors and infectious disease experts in Boston sent a letter to the Biden administration, presenting their concerns and a call for global solidarity as countries move forward in the coronavirus pandemic.
Among their concerns was the worry that if countries are unable to have a substantive rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, ongoing transmission of the virus presents the risk of not only causing the collapse of health care systems under new cases and deaths, but the potential for emerging virus variants that are resistant to existing vaccines. Such variants pose the risk of causing reinfections even in countries, like the U.S., where the vaccine rollout has progressed significantly.
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