Vaccine diplomacy

When it broke out in the winter of 2019, no one had seen the pandemic triggered by COVID-19 and its trail of hundreds, thousands, millions of deaths coming. Very quickly, it became clear that a vaccine would be the only effective weapon to stop the various mutations of the virus. The world’s major pharmaceutical laboratories are getting into the swing of things. A first vaccine was announced in Russia, followed shortly by Western and Chinese vaccines. Faced with a global pandemic, everyone agrees that the response must be international. But everywhere, it is the vaccine selfishness that imposes itself: charity begins at home. And that’s not all: as a result of the remarkable efforts of researchers, the vaccines they have designed to save lives are becoming the means available to the great powers to suggest and impose their influence. Underneath the health crisis, it is time for geopolitics. A new vaccine diplomacy is taking place in the concert of nations. The United States began by refusing to export vaccines to insolvent countries, and the European Union caved in to pressure from pharmaceutical companies. Russia and China are advancing their pawns against a West that has forgotten its values of health solidarity. From Serbia to the small Republic of San Marino and Senegal, director Gilles Cayatte examines the new global power relations and questions the political and health decision-makers in Brussels, Moscow, Geneva and Washington. The investigation is conclusive: health crisis or not, international power relations are more implacable than ever.