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The Current Transcript for April 28, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

SCILLA ALLEN: We need to start thinking of locusts and insects as a seasonal crop rather than a pest.

MATT GALLOWAY: Locusts are destroying crops in Kenya and neighbouring countries in Africa, descending on fields and munching away until nothing is left. In 30 minutes, how enterprising locals are spinning a nightmare into an opportunity, catching the bugs and turning them into food for livestock and perhaps one day humans. Also this morning, vaccinations are happening in Canada. Not as quickly, perhaps as people would like, but they are happening, which is more than you can say for many parts of the world. And that has led some to say free the vaccines.

VOICE: This is unprecedented times. And we believe and [inaudible] believes that this is a time to trigger that provision and waive patent rights.

MG: In an hour. The push to release covid vaccines from the patents that protect them, would that actually mean more vaccines getting quickly to the places that need them the most? We'll find out. But in the race between those vaccines and the variants, it is the variants that are winning in many parts of this country. And that is where we start. Good morning. My name is Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

National affairs panel discusses the third wave’s impact on provincial politics

Guests: Robson Fletcher, Vassy Kapelos, Jean Laroche

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: Unfortunately, Ontario is far from the only place dealing with a spike in cases across Nova Scotia and especially in the Halifax region, numbers have risen quickly and the province requested help. For Albertans too we're standing ready, our government has reached out to Alberta on what support they may need to keep people safe and get the situation back under control.

MG: Back under control, indeed. ICUs overflowing in Ontario, state of emergency orders in Alberta. And now even the pandemic's Canadian success story, Nova Scotia is back in lockdown. The third wave has taken over this country. And so today we've asked some CBC correspondents from across Canada to join our national affairs panel to discuss Robson Fletcher is a CBC reporter in Calgary. Vassy Kapelos is the host of Power and Politics, she is in Ottawa. And Jean Laroche is the CBC's legislative reporter in Halifax. Good morning to you all.

ALL: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Jean Laroche, doctor Robert Strang, the medical officer of health in Nova Scotia, was on this program just a few weeks ago, and we were congratulating him on how the pandemic had gone in Nova Scotia. How did that province go from a success story to where it is today with new lockdown measures announced?

JEAN LAROCHE: That's a really good question. I think we very much saw this in Nova Scotia as kind of a war being waged elsewhere offshore rather than in our province. And I think there was hope, obviously, that it wouldn't crash against our shores. But it has. And we're kind of at a point where we're trying to figure out how we've kind of fallen off the cliff. I know that there was a lot of anger aimed at a party that happened with Ontarians coming in and not self isolating and getting together with a bunch of Nova Scotians. And Dr. Strang has said, has pointed to that one event, as having been kind of the match that lit the fire. And so we are where we are. But I mean, it's all proportional, right, in the first wave. We had a maximum of kind of 55 cases a day then we had a second wave in November, about 37 cases a day. Yesterday, 96 cases. So it really has been kind of a wake up call. Nothing to the scale that we're seeing in other parts of the country, but certainly more than we've seen here since the start of this pandemic.

MG: Well, and just very briefly, I mean, it will not have gone unnoticed by people elsewhere in the country that in the face of those rising cases, the medical officer of health, Dr. Strang, moved very quickly to impose lockdown measures.

JL: Absolutely. And that's really been the M.O. for dealing with it here in Nova Scotia. We've done a lot of testing. In fact, at last count, we have done almost a half a million tests. And the point being, you test, you isolate and you kind of break the chain of transmission. And that's been very successful so far in Nova Scotia. And that's why yesterday's circuit breaker came in harsh, heavy and hard. And the hope is that we'll be able to nip this in the bud.

MG: Robson Fletcher, Dr. Deena Hinshaw in Alberta said that there are unprecedented levels of transmission in your province. How bad is it out there?

ROBSONN FLETCHER: Well, I mean, right now, Alberta has the most active cases per capita of anywhere in Canada. Yesterday, we saw a new record set for test positivity at well over 11 percent. But so far, the level of hospitalisation and especially the number of people in intensive care is not as bad as it has been in Ontario...

MG: Can you help me understand how that's the case? How given the highest test positivity rate in the country, those hospitals aren't overwhelmed like they are in Ontario?

RF: It's largely because Alberta had brought down its hospitalisation and intensive care rate after the second wave to a lower level then Ontario did. So, you know, Ontario is starting at a higher level of people in intensive care when the third wave hit. So we've had a bit more runway in our hospital capacity, but that's starting to be exhausted now. We've seen the numbers rising for a number of weeks. We're reaching the peak number of people in intensive care, as we saw during the second wave. And we're actually seeing more young adults now being admitted to an intensive care unit than we have ever before. So things aren't quite as bad as in Ontario, but they've been on an upward trajectory.

MG: Vassy Kapelos, Ottawa is sending in help to Ontario, to Nova Scotia, maybe other provinces as well. What does that tell you about how the provinces are handling this third wave?

VASSY KAPELOS: Well, I think it tells you maybe just as much about how bad things are in those provinces. And I mean, especially where the problem is primarily located. And that is, as my colleagues have laid out, especially in Alberta and in the case of Ontario, in hospitals, we know that it's not just a case of ICU capacity. So the beds that are needed, it's a case of actually resourcing those beds. And that has been, I know very much so in Ontario at this juncture. A big issue right there. There's something like 600 people needed to staff what might be additional resources or additional beds and additional capacity needed in the ICU, because even though we seem to see a little bit of a downward trend when it comes to the number of cases, hospitalisations usually lag that by one to two weeks. And so we still see hospitalisations and entries into the ICU increasing. So the fact that the military is being sent and they're being and even people from other provinces, from Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, nine of them arrived yesterday in Toronto. The offer to help other provinces as well, I think in Nova Scotia it'll be mostly directed towards testing capacity by my colleague, correct me. But in Ontario and perhaps in Alberta, it will be definitely focussed on the hospital environment. It really shows you, I guess, how bad things have gotten and where the real strain in the system is right now.

MG: I'll come back to this in a moment. But Jean is that where? I mean, there's 60 members of the armed forces coming in to help in Nova Scotia. Is it going to be really beefing up the testing capacity?

JL: Absolutely. We have not seen the ICU or even the hospitalisations that the other provinces have had. And again, the focus has been at the front end of this, dealing with testing, isolating and then moving on. And Nova Scotians have been lining up for hours in some cases to try and get tested, asymptomatic testing in pop up sites. And obviously people who have symptoms, even one symptom. As an example, I get hay fever this time of year. I've been tested ten times already.

MG: Ten times!

JL: Every time I feel crappy, I get stuffed up or whatever. And now, fortunately, I live in a community, Dartmouth, on the other side of the harbour from Halifax. We actually have a drive thru at the local hospital here. They managed to put together shipping crates and create two drive through centres. And I've been lucky enough. It hasn't been busy when I've gone. In fact, I sometimes booked an appointment, gone to the testing and been back in my home all in the matter of 20 minutes.

MG: Nicely done. Robson, What would it take for Premier Kenney to ask for or even accept help from the federal government?

RF: I think things would have to get a lot worse than they currently are. It's not really in Jason Kenney's nature to be accepting help from Ottawa in this way. I mean, we saw him sort of preemptively swat away the idea when the federal budget came out of money for child care, that was part of that budget. Earlier in the pandemic we also saw him sort of brush aside some federal money that was on offer to help top up wages of essential workers because it would have required the province to kick in some cash of its own. You know, we've repeatedly seen Kenney sort of hesitant to cooperate with federal programmes, especially if there are strings attached and Justin Trudeau is on the other end of those strings. And as I said, you know, the situation isn't so dire right now that I think federal assistance would be needed in a broad way. Alberta's already making some adjustments of its own to the healthcare system. Just last night, it announced that 30 percent of surgeries are going to be postponed to free up more capacity for an expected influx of covid patients. So I think things would have to get a fair bit worse before the province would be willing to be seen to be accepting help from Ottawa.

MG: Vassy, What does that tell you about the politics behind Ottawa's move to send in the troops to help the provinces and how fraught those politics are?

VK: Well, look, they're not, they're not great. There's a lot of politics between a number of provinces and Ottawa right now on a whole host of issues, including, you know, I'll take the example of Ontario, the back and forth over with the military. Last week, it was this weird sort of thing happening behind the scenes for journalists who are asking, wait is the military coming? Because the federal government was saying we're offering help and then the provinces saying we don't need it. And then they were saying, well, maybe we do. And then we learn they asked the military like it was this very odd back and forth. And you have to think that...

MG: What's that about?

VK: I mean, that's the thing. You have to think that politics has something to do with it. But at the same time, you know, I think it has something to do with it. I don't know if it's the dominating sort of motivating factor. I think things are disorganised at the provincial level to a certain degree. I think there's been a lot of back and forth, even within the politics of the like, you know, domestically of our own province here. So I'm not sure if it's entirely just about that. And I don't and I don't think, you know, to give politicians some credit. I don't think if, you know, that they're necessarily going to put that entirely ahead of the needs that exist out there, I think there was some delay in figuring out what exactly those needs are. But at the end of the day, I think people are sort of left with this, you know, just because there is so much back and forth as Robson mentioned, on other subjects. And then, you know, in Ontario lately, it's been sick days, for example, that there is some politics at play, there are some politics at play. I don't think that leaves a great taste in Canadians' mouths. I think they just want you know, if help is needed, help should come and it should be asked for. I don't know if this political aspect of it is really sitting so well with people.

MG: I want to get to the sick days in a moment. But Robson, we've spoken a couple of times already on this program in the last few weeks, it seems like, about this delicate dance that Premier Jason Kenney is trying to do when it comes to the health crisis that's in front of him, but also the opposition that he's facing either from people who want tougher rules or those who want restrictions loosened. We spoke with a member of his own party who was very strongly opposed to the idea of tougher restrictions. So how is Jason Kenney managing that dance?

RF: I mean, not very well to be to be frank. And we have seen that played out in a number of recent polls, including a pretty extensive one we commissioned here at CBC Calgary in March. And, you know, he's really tried to sort of thread the needle and, you know, bring in restrictions, but not too many. He's often delayed the decision to do that, trying to sort of hold off and and end up doing it at the last minute. But then things are even more out of control than they were, you know, several weeks earlier when you had groups of physicians and large numbers of Albertans calling for more restrictions. At the same time, on the other side, as you mentioned, there's a large number of Albertans, especially in more rural areas, who are very opposed to the restrictions that we have already. And then you have a significant number of people in Jason Kenney's own caucus, his MLAs who have openly opposed the restrictions that have been brought in. So he's tried to sort of use a middle of the road strategy, but he's ultimately ended up sort of satisfying no one on either side of the debate.

MG: Is there a sense that given the fact that, as you said, Alberta has the highest per capita testing rates in the country, the highest test positivity rate, that there could be further restrictions given the increasing number of cases?

RF: That's been brought up time and time again in the, you know, press conferences with the health officials, with our chief medical officer of health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw. So far, there's no indication of that. You know, a few weeks ago, we moved backwards in our reopening plan. We had gone from sort of the last lockdown after the second wave to step one of a reopening and then step two. And then we were planning to go forward to a step three, but ended up moving back to the step one. And that is where Alberta is at, we're sort of at one level of being more open than we were after the last lockdown. And so far, the premier has not given any indication that he has a lot of appetite for introducing any new measures beyond that.

MG: What about in Nova Scotia, Jean? I mean, what sort of support is there for the new lockdown measures that were introduced yesterday?

JL: I think, by and large, Nova Scotians have been very compliant with any change. I mean, we are in the enviable position that we were essentially covid free through May, through to October. So we got used to going out to restaurants, going to bars or sitting on the patio, that sort of thing. But I think that because we did so well weathering the second or I guess first, second, and now this third wave, there was I think people are ready to do what we need to do to get back to where we were and be able to be braggy about the fact that we're one of the safest places in the world to live.

MG: Braggy [chuckles] there's a lot of people elsewhere in the country who will raise an eyebrow to that. Vassy, you mentioned the issue of paid sick leave and again, what voters are looking for. It seems like, is answers, not the ping pong game where you have different provinces who are suggesting things, but then putting it back on the federal government, the federal government saying that it's the responsibility of the provinces. What's the end game here?

VK: Oh, my goodness, I wish I knew. I feel like I've been interviewing people on both sides of that for the past number of weeks, and it's getting to the point where even I at the end of this, you know, keep thinking like, can't there be a solution arrived at? And, you know, the debate has primarily played out in Ontario. But yesterday we heard the premier of B.C. also vocalised his disdain for what the federal government has not, I guess, done when it comes to the federal sick leave benefit, which is already in place, accessible for about a month. But there are certain things you need to have, a certain amount of work you have to have missed to qualify. It's less than minimum wage after taxes and you don't get it for three to five days. And so I think the premiers had been hoping, come the budget time, that the federal government would have changed some of the or close some of the loopholes of that program to make it more accessible. But at the same time, those premiers, and most especially Premier Doug Ford, has been under a lot of pressure to act on what is provincial jurisdiction and by that mandate, some sort of paid sick days, maybe even a couple of them. There's been a number of proposals put forward by opposition parties which have been voted down by the PCs, and he has resisted doing so as well until last week, as we remember during the now infamous press conference in the backyard in which he said, you know, we're going to bring in the best sick leave program, I think either in the country or...\.

MG: In North America.

VK: ...or the world. Yes, something to that effect. And so what we're left with a week later is a proposal from Ontario to the feds saying just double the amount and we'll pay for it for the difference. And the federal government now taking what I would say is a much more definitive stance and saying, as the Labour minister told me last night, actually, we expect if any province wants us to work with them on this area, we don't exactly know what work with the means, but work with them that they're going to have to mandate permanently some sort of sick leave in their province. So those negotiations continue. I would say again, though, you know, it's a political back and forth at a time when essential workers we know are being put in precarious positions across many parts of this country, especially punctuated here in Ontario, in that they feel they cannot miss work and are going to work sick as a result because they don't have this kind of sick leave support. And so while this political debate ensues and, you know, it's going to take time to work things out, I think time is... it's already too late, like in many instances. Right. And so, again, it's like a political debate, I think that's playing out in this pandemic that just rings hollow for a number of Canadians.

MG: So just in the last couple of minutes that we have, let's talk about vaccinations. Robson, in Alberta, there have been outbreaks of meatpacking plants more recently at oilsands camps. And I know that there were efforts to start vaccinating workers at those meatpacking plants. They were delayed and now I guess they're underway. Why weren't those workers included in the earliest rounds of vaccinations?

RF: You know, a lot of people were asking those questions. The vaccine rollout was initially done with some essential workers in the healthcare system getting the first vaccines. But then it was primarily rolled out by age, the situation with the meatpacking plants, which have seen several major outbreaks during the pandemic, we're talking hundreds and hundreds of cases and numerous deaths has been something that, you know, Labour leaders have been calling for. And as you mentioned, there were some delays in rolling that out. But the premier and the health minister here held a press conference earlier this week to announce that that will happen, now. It was set to start yesterday. The plan is to vaccinate 15,000 workers at meatpacking plants across the province at a variety of different local and larger scale clinics. You know, it's been a source of contention, though, here in Alberta. The [inaudible] Federation of Labour has called for a public enquiry into how the government handled one situation at one plant in particular that saw one of the largest outbreaks. Initially, they say that the government misled workers last year by telling them the facility was safe when in actuality they had evidence that there was transmission in the workplace. The government here has maintained consistently, though, that, you know, there are some forms of transmission that they pointed to workers carpooling to and from the plant. They've really focussed on transmission within households. But it remains a point of contention here for sure.

MG: Jean, just very briefly, we have a few seconds, but are people in Atlantic Canada satisfied thus far with the vaccine rollout?

JL: Depends on who you talk to. Certainly in Nova Scotia, there's been a lot of talk about the fact that Robert Strang has stuck to the Age-Based criteria for rolling out the vaccine to the detriment of people with cancer and transplant recipients who say we need to get to the head of the line, but we're now at about 25 percent vaccinated, which is below what New Brunswick and Newfoundland are, but ahead of what PEI is. So. Were there.

MG: There. It's great to speak with you all about this. I appreciate you being here this morning. Robson, thank you so much.

RF: Thank you.

MG: Jean, thank you so much.

JL: Merci.

MG: And Vassy, we will speak to you hopefully sometime in the future. You're about to head off on maternity leave. You will have your hands full. And I'm sure you won't miss conversations like this because you'll be very busy. But good luck and thank you very much.

VK: Thank you, Matt. That's really kind of you. I appreciate it. And I will miss conversations like this.

MG: You'll have lots of other things on your plate.

mg: Robson Fletcher, a reporter for CBC Calgary. Vassy Kapelos, host of Power and politics and Jean Laroche is the CBC's legislative reporter in Halifax. Your CBC News is next. And then from pests to food, we're going to talk about locusts coming up. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

Harvesting locusts to turn a pest into a seasonal crop in Kenya

Guest: Scilla Allen, Achegei Abdi Adan, James Egonyu

MG: Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, the growing debate over covid-19 vaccine patents. Should they be suspended and would that get more vaccines to the people who need them the most? But first, it's not a pest. It's a crunchy new snack.

[Sound Clip: locusts storm].

MG: It's not a rainstorm, it's a storm of locusts. Have you ever seen a cloud of locusts descend on a field? It is terrifying, like living in a giant black cloud twisting through the sky. And these bugs caused massive devastation in their wake.

[Sound clip: crunching sounds].

MG: That is the sound of locusts eating everything in their path. Entire fields, farms, forests decimated by these hungry pests. But a new project in Kenya is trying to make the most of the swarms by turning them into food for livestock. Scilla Allen is a project manager with The Bug Picture. It is an insect protein company. She also runs a farm in Le Munga, Kenya, and Achegei Abdi Adan works in community engagement with NGOs in the area and worked on this project.

MG: Good morning to you both.

BOTH: Hello.

MG: Scilla, where did the idea for this come from to turn pests into food?

SCILLA ALLEN: Well, I've been farming insects for about two years now in collaboration with The Bug Picture and I have their colony on my farm in Le Munga. When the locusts started hitting Kenya and the region. Really, Laura, the CEO of the bug picture, started looking into how we could turn the problem into a solution. And as we were already involved with insects, it really seemed that we had an idea that locusts as protein would be a really good solution. Really good way to go.

MG: Why do locusts make such good food for livestock?

SA: They're high protein and locusts and insects are a natural food certainly for chickens and fish. They have a very high protein. They're very bioavailable. We need to start thinking of locusts and insects as a seasonal crop rather than a pest.

MG: They are pests, though. Abdeh, how bad have the locusts been this year in Kenya?

ACHEHEI ABDI ADAN: Yes, the locusts are really close to devastating effect to, you know, Kenya. I come from Turkana and this community and the pastoral community where the locusts are able to destroy most of the grazing land for the animals, you know, and they affect the grazing land for animals. It brings a lot of problems because this community depends mostly on the animals and partially on the cash or the crops.

MG: So when you say they were able to destroy the area, I mean, how much damage would they do and what would that damage look like?

ACHEHEI ABDI ADAN: Well, I think I don't know in terms of estimation, you know, when the locust or a swarm of locusts land in a certain field in a spot of around 10 to 15 minutes or 30 minutes. You'll realise they've finished everything depending on the size of the swarm. But as far as bigger swarms go, they cover over 50 to 60 hectares of land. And, you know, when you talk about hectors, these are very big lands.

MG: And what's left when they're done?

ACHEHEI ABDI ADAN: Surely you cannot believe you know, it's like this was a dry land. When they leave, they leave only sticks without leaves. Where you will not believe that land was green or had some vegetation, you'll be shocked to see it is totally dry.

MG: And so when you heard of this idea to harvest the locusts, what was your reaction?

ACHEHEI ABDI ADAN: Yeah, to me, it was a surprising activity because I've been working in [inaudible] County. We are working, I'm working on a [inaudible] called [inaudible] and we've never had done anything to do with locusts or insects. So when I was told about harvesting locusts and I was like, how are we going to harvest this, given the perspective of the communities? You know, our communities are not used to catching insects. You know, it's like a taboo harvesting locusts or insects. But with the help of the bug picture, Scilla and the team, I think they're the ones who brought us together and might take us through. That's how we catch locusts. How they are going to be processed?

MG: Scilla, what was the original plan? How were you going to go about harvesting these locusts?

SA: [laughter] Matt It was untried and a lot of it. We had a lot of ideas and a lot of theories, but it was a very steep learning curve. We knew that it was probably unlikely that we'd be able to harvest them during the day, although we did play with the idea of using nets to try and capture them. But through trial and error, we learnt very quickly that the best thing to do is to wait until they roost at night and they get cold. And once they cooled down and they get cold, they really don't move. So it was then very easy to go in and literally just put plastic sheeting under the trees and bushes and shake the trees and bushes and the locusts literally fall out onto the plastic sheeting and then we pour them into the sacks. With smaller bushes and branches, you would literally just put the branch into the sack and shake it into the bag. So late at night and early, early in the morning four/five o'clock in the morning. Was when we were really most successful in harvesting.

MG: How many... you wouldn't be able to count them, but how much were you able to harvest?

SA: In just under two months we were able to harvest about 4.3 Tons of locusts just under four and a half tons. We had originally intended to target Takana and have the project on the ground in Takana in Abdi's region. But the locusts, being the creatures that they were, were not so accommodating. And we sat and watched the skies and waited for the locusts to come and they didn't. So over a weekend, we decided to reset the project and we leapt into the cars and packed her bags and headed right across the country to [inaudible] and towards the Somali border and turned the whole project mobile.

MG: And are you chasing after clouds of locusts? Is that what you're doing to try and track them and figure out where they're going to spend the night?

SA: Yeah, it was pretty challenging. So we had a lot of contacts out there. The FAO had a lot of scouts on the ground. So a lot of it was networking and finding out where the swarms were. To start with we tried following them ourselves, but there was not enough of us. So then we enlisted what we call [inaudible] which are guys on motorbikes. And once we found a swarm, we put a motorbike on that swarm and say to them, just stay with it. As soon as the swarm roosted in the evenings, usually about five or six o'clock in the evening, we would then... our timing was tight and we're on the equator. So we don't have very long before it gets completely dark. We had to get in there, we had to mobilise the communities. We had to convince people that we were not crazy and we had to get them to promise them and convince them that we were going to pay them. And the [inaudible] guys, the mobile guys would then call us and say the locusts have roosted in this area. We then depended on where that was. If it was, we had to check on safety. We had certain situations where we couldn't harvest a swarm because of wild animals. We had situations where we couldn't harvest the swarm because the owner of the land wouldn't allow us on there. So there was a lot of failure and a lot of success and a lot of challenges.

MG: Abdi, part of your job is try to convince the people to stay up at night and harvest these locusts. How did you do that?

ACHEHEI ABDI ADAN: Yeah, I think the part of it has been said by Scilla, whereby we coordinate with the FAO guys on the ground, we coordinate with the local administration, the chiefs, the county administrators, the elders, the agricultural officers. These are the people who give us information. Now, once we trace a swarm, we follow it. And when we are sure that it does roost in a certain location. It's now our role to ensure that we move around the village convincing or telling people that locusts are roosted somewhere. And in this case they have to harvest so that they get something. And as we look at the project from a locality to a more agricultural area, we're able to convince them if they catch these locusts, they'll be able to reduce the impact of the locusts on their farms.

MG: Was it difficult to convince them of that?

ACHEHEI ABDI ADAN: No, no, no. It was not. It was difficult at some point. But some people, they took it as a joke. How do you convince them to harvest locust? They are not even sure you are going to buy it, you see, so sometimes we have to show them some evidence our payment folders. How we've paid other people previously if they speak the same language, we can also call our one of the beneficiaries in a village to ask him, kindly talk to your colleague or to your tribesmen here to let him know or believe that we are buying this locust, and we are serious. You see, it was taking time for them to buy the idea. But as we speak of it now, the project ended. But up to this time, well, people will call us, we are seeing some swarms around, can we harvest? Are you coming to buy, you see, without even our influence on the ground.

MG: Scilla, what happened with the wild elephants?

SA: So we were very lucky. When I say lucky, hang on a minute. Let's clarify this. The swarm came and roosted on the forest right next door to my farm. So we went, OK, get the neighbours. And we literally walked into the forest to harvest the swarms. And we had about twenty people in there and they all started harvesting. But the elephants that were in the forest were not impressed. And we eventually had to leave at speed, having only collected about thirty kilos of locusts. There were a couple of other times when we came across elephants in the big ranches. And that we weren't even able to get in there in the first place.

MG: Abdi, what do you see as the benefit of this project for the communities that were involved?

ACHEHEI ABDI ADAN: Yeah, I think one of the benefits is now we are trying to change the perception of the community, that the insects or locust can be at the same time harmful, but at the same time can become harvest that can bring income to the community. Again, we are trying to give these people knowledge. If we process these locusts into animal feed, we can feed the animals, can be processed into fertiliser, organic fertiliser that we can use for their farms to increase their produce. You see. So I think one of the benefits for this community and also to the entire locality, the Kenya now and the world, that locusts can be food. Even we have communities in Kenya who eat locusts. So I think it is the benefit. It's ensuring that it will produce animal feed. It produces organic fertiliser. And again, sometimes it is not a disaster.

MG: Scilla what do you see as the benefit of this project?

SA: I have two things. On the one hand, we could immediately make a difference with the locust swarms there and then but I think also by opening up and making people more aware and understanding of insects, we could then take it on to an understanding that some insects can be farmed and we can actually develop a protein source and find a way to recycle kitchen waste and really have a result in the community through farming insects or through harvesting insects.

MG: So what happens now? You have four and a half tons of locusts. I mean, A, what does that look like? And B, what do you do, with it all?

SA: So we ground them and we dried it and we milled it and you lose about 50 percent when you dry it. But you're talking about a milled product that is 60, about 60 to 70 percent protein. So, you know, about 750 tonnes of milled locusts is going to give you about three tonnes of chicken food. So we had trials done and tested and the chickens that were used in the trial were 20 percent bigger than the control group. So we have turned this locust meal into chicken feed, which is actually gone up to the Kakuma refugee camp. The [inaudible] emergency fund were very instrumental in allowing this project to go ahead. And they do a lot of work in the Kakuma camp. So one of the projects they have up there is they are helping the farmers to grow chickens, to support themselves. So this chicken food will actually go to Kakuma, the locust meal, and be used and made available for chicken feed for the refugees in the Kakuma camp. The compost trials took a little bit longer to complete and we made the compost out of the locusts that had been sprayed so that we felt that they may not be safe as animal feed. And we're just waiting for the results to see whether the chemicals were broken down through the composting process and whether this is another solution to using the locust. If we can harvest sprayed locusts and do something with those as well, it's a win-win situation because that would have doubled our harvest if we'd known at the time.

MG: This is fascinating. Scilla I really appreciate speaking with you. Thank you very much.

SA: Pleasure.

MG: Abdi, thank you very much as well.

ACHEHEI ABDI ADAN: Yeah, thank you very much.

MG: Scilla Allen is a project manager with the bug picture. Achegei Abdi Adan works with local NGOs in Kenya. James Egonyu, you have spent a lot of time figuring out how to make the most of insects. He is a research scientist with the Insects for Food Feed and Other Uses program. It's part of the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, and he is in Nairobi, Kenya.

MG: James, good morning to you.

JAMES EGONYU: Hello.

MG: What do you make of this idea of harvesting locusts and turning them into animal feed?

JE: Oh, yes, it's been great listening to my colleagues from the bug picture and amazed by what they are doing. Ourselves we focus on insects for reasons that insects are highly rich in nutrients, in most cases comparing with a common animal proteins or even superceding some of them, for example, the locusts. We conducted a comprehensive review of papers that have been published on the nutritional value of locusts, and we find that the protein content of locust ranges from 62 to 78 percent and most of the common animal protein sources ranged from 18 to 24, like beef, like soy meal and fish. So this is a highly nutritious product. Also rich in vitamins and minerals, so it's a great idea and listening to the team that ventured into collecting locusts and seeing that they could only collect about five times at most. And in Kenya recently, it was estimated that a single swarm covered about two thousand four hundred square kilometres. And in this single swarm, we could have about 0.2 to 0.4 Million metric tons of locust biomass.

MG: You see this as in some ways a replacement for animal feed that otherwise would be available. How difficult is it to get that feed for animals right now in Kenya and other parts of the continent?

JE: And probably the issue of animal feed as a challenge is a global scenario. Animal feed costs 60 to 70 percent of total production of animals. And this is mainly fuelled by the cost of the protein component, commonly fishmeal or soy meal or cotton seed cake. So these are very costly components of the feed and mix. The feed is one of the most expensive item in the animal production sector.

MG: Is it common that insects are used as a food source for animals in Kenya?

JE: Oh yes. Currently we are promoting the black soldier fly and a number of enterprises have taken it up, producing a lot of it for animal to replace fishmeal or soy meal in animal feed. So looking at all these under the context of rapid population growth, we are seeing a tremendous increase in demand for animal products and which will surely also translate to higher demand for animal feed.

MG: Abdi was talking about. I mean, the scourge of locusts and what kind of devastation they can bring on fields and farms if they are such a big problem. Why do you think it's taken so long to start using locusts as a source for animal food?

JE: Locusts have for long been looked at as pests. Much as for millennia, communities eat locusts, but deliberate effort to mass harvest locusts has not been previously put in place because of the devastating effects. The quick action of most governments and stakeholders is to spread locusts. So that perspective has to change if locusts have to be taken advantage of.

MG: What about beyond locusts? I mean, are there other... this seems like an opportunity. Scilla called it a win win. In many ways, it seems like an opportunity to use untapped populations of pests for animal feed. Are there other opportunities here?

JE: Yes, some insects, they are not even pests. For example, in some countries of Africa, we have [inaudible] swarming grasshoppers which really destroy crops. These swarms in seasons and people have developed high technologies for mass collection of these insects. So it's something that can actually be adapted to locusts as well. The way forward is to develop techniques. We are thinking of techniques like vacuum pumps and collecting these locusts when they are not yet swarming like the immature stages, which equally as nutritious as their adult counterparts.

MG: What else has to be done to ensure that that can be taken advantage of? That if those insects are there, that you have the systems in place to turn them into fee.

JE: I think learning from the experience of the bug picture, the value chain for locust does not exist. All such insects, which could be pests that can be turned into animal feed or even food for humans, systems that are not in place, infrastructures to be built. You saw the challenge of predicting where the insects could land so that people can harvest them. This research needs to be done. So those issues and policies, for example, not many countries have policies and regulatory standards in place to permit the use of these novel, if I could call them, or unconventional ingredients of animal feed. The countries across the world or across Africa will need to develop policies that support this, a case in places Kenya and Uganda, where we've already come up with standards for using insects as human food and and feed.

MG: What potential is there for more humans to be eating more insects?

JE: It's great. It is very great. The insect market worldwide is increasing as people become more aware of the dangers of conventional meat in their lives. So it's about lifestyle change. But the market is growing steadily across the world for edible insects.

MG: How much of that is about a mindset? I mean, there are vast, you know, numbers of the population around the world that already eat insects. And there are a lot of people around the world who do not. And so how much is it about convincing and changing the mindset of those who don't?

JE: It's a very interesting question there. I think we want to support those who already know the benefits of consuming insects. So we need interventions that will boost the production and utilisation of these insects where they are consumed, but also for people who do not consume insects. Our research has shown that a number of them are able to consume insects, not as whole insects. They could be willing to take it as an ingredient in a bakery products, for example.

MG: Like a powder or something like that?

JE: Like powder yes, powder incorporated into bread or cakes.

MG: What's your favourite meal involving insects?

JE: The winged termite

MG: What do you do with the wing termites?

JE: I can eat them raw. I grew up eating them raw and the most favourably we toss them. They are rich in oil. So we don't need oil. We just tossed them the way there. Then we can also pound it into a paste and mix it with the peanut butter and produce another recipe which is so nice. It's my favourite dish, probably not only as an insect but for any food I have eaten. My favourite dish is the winged termite.

MG: Fantastic. James, I really appreciate speaking with you. Thank you very much.

JE: I appreciate so much to that. You chose to talk to me on this subject. Thank you very much.

MG: Take care of yourself.

MG: Bye bye.

JE: Thank you. Bye bye.

MG: James Egonyu, is a research scientist with the Insects for Food Feed and Other Uses program. He was in Nairobi, Kenya. Sprinkling a little bit of cricket powder into your morning smoothie. Are there other bug delicacies we need to know about? You can let us know. There's an entire huge swath of the population that, as James was saying, eats bugs, insects, wing termites on a regular basis. And many people perhaps, who are yet to try that. Let us know what we should be trying if we're not there yet. You can email us thecurrnt@cbc.ca or tweet us @thecurrentcbc. Coming up after your regional update, with covid cases rising around the world, there is a fight brewing and the fight is over vaccine patents and whether those patents should be lifted so that more vaccines can get to more people sooner. We'll talk further about that coming up in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current on CBC Radio One.

[Music: Theme]

Calls for patents on COVID-19 vaccines to be lifted

Guest: Siham Rayale, Andrei Iancu, Gian Gandhi

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current.

MG: Covid cases are continuing to climb around the world and as things get worse, the gulf between those with access to vaccines and those without is only growing. Now, pressure is mounting on U.S. President Joe Biden to lift intellectual property protections on covid-19 vaccines. Ten U.S. senators and more than 160 former state and Nobel laureates are urging the president to support a patent waiver proposal at the World Trade Organisation. This proposal by India and South Africa is backed by dozens of developing countries who want to produce their own vaccine locally, the people, and [audio skip] also pushing for patents to be suspended. The alliance is a coalition of over 50 organisations, including Oxfam. Siham Rayale is Oxfam Canada's policy and advocacy lead on humanitarian and refugee issues and Oxfam's lead on the vaccine campaign.

MG: Siham, good morning.

SIHAM RAYALE: Morning, Matt. How are you?

MG: I'm well, thanks. What exactly are India and South Africa asking the World Trade Organisation to do?

SR: So India and South Africa are essentially pushing for a trip's waiver, and this waiver can go a long way to reducing barriers to vaccine inequality by pushing for a compulsory licence to waive patents and intellectual property related to vaccines. It also is being applied to drugs and therapeutics and other health technologies, though, and very specific to the covid-19 crisis.

MG: And so when you say a trips waiver, I mean that that would just remove the patents or suspend the patents from these vaccines?

SR: So yeah, it's suspended. So the proposal is asking for a temporary suspension of current patents right now that are on vaccines. So it's not a carte blanche request for pharmaceutical companies to change their whole mandate about how they produce drugs and health technologies. But considering the scale of this covid crisis and considering, you know, we've got a vaccine supply problem and limited vaccines have already been purchased by wealthier countries and we've only got a few pharmaceutical companies that are producing it. So this waiver that's being proposed by India and South Africa is really about pushing ways to rapidly scale up vaccine manufacturing and production, especially for developing countries that... you know, who are ready to do it.

MG: Tell me more about that. How would suspending a patent and the intellectual property rights on these vaccines help those developing countries?

SR: It basically removes this.... This TRIPS agreement is a legal agreement to protect global IP patents and intellectual property globally. So it pretty much removes a legal hurdle, meaning that for those countries that can mass produce the current vaccines that we have on the market and use the technology, use the know how that's already been developed, it allows them to produce it without having to worry about being taken to court or having other kinds of financial or punitive measures lobbied at them for infringing patents.

MG: The US president is being called on to support this waiver. What sort of power does he have in getting this adopted?

SR: I mean, significant. Significant. So when two thirds of the World Trade Organisation is in support of this waiver, but a lot of the G7 countries, including US and Canada, haven't shown their open support for it. But, you know, the US administration and the U.S. trade representative more specifically have started using language around vaccine inequality. You know, the U.S. has put five billion dollars of public money into Moderna, so and other vaccine candidates and companies. So for the US to be saying right now that we support... we're actively reviewing the trip's proposal. Yesterday, President Biden said that the U.S. is looking at likely supporting sharing technology and knowhow around vaccines. That's huge. It has the financial wherewithal to do that and I think can help bring a lot of G7 countries onside.

MG: There is debate as to whether this would actually create more vaccines to get more vaccines into the arms of people who need them in this desperate situation. Bill Gates was on this program recently. He's been a huge funder of the WHO of vaccine development and distribution and global health. And I asked him if waiving patents would help get more vaccines out. Take a listen to what he said.

BILL GATES: If it would create one additional vaccine, then I might support it. But in fact, making vaccines is not about the IP here. It's about these factories being exactly right and passing strict regulatory review. There are very few high quality vaccine factories in the world. And IP is not the issue. When the vaccines are made in India, there's no royalty or payment flowing back to the vaccine inventor that's AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson. It's free. So all we're paying through covax with Canadian and other supporters, we're just paying the marginal cost of manufacture.

MG: So what do you make of that point that he says this is not about patents, this is about production, that local production isn't... you have to have that ability to produce those vaccines, and that's not tied specifically to the patent itself.

SR: Right. So, I mean, so I would disagree significantly with that. And the two proponents of the waiver, and you don't have to go far to look for manufacturing capacity to be able to produce vaccines, particularly in the global south. The two proponents of the waiver, South Africa and India, India, we're familiar with because the serum institute has been licenced to make AstraZeneca. But there's another. A company in India that is ready, it has the manufacturing capacity to do so, but it doesn't have a licencing agreement, voluntary or otherwise. South Africa's Aspen Pharmacare is already doing a fill in finish its licence to do a filling finish for the Johnson&Johnson vaccine. But there's another manufacturing company in South Africa called Biovax that's currently producing other drugs and vaccine that can be repurposed. You know, there's institutes in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal and Egypt that are already making drugs and vaccines for tuberculosis, rabies, diphtheria and yellow fever and, you know, Ethiopia, Nigeria or two of the largest economies in Africa. And they have demonstrated manufacturing capacity, South Africa in its rebuttal to WTO members that have asked, well, can you show manufacturing capacity to make vaccines, has brought all of these examples forward. And all it takes is investment in existing infrastructure that can be repurposed to make covid-19 vaccine. So we would disagree. And he mentioned profits, which I think is such a huge myth to believe that pharmaceutical companies aren't profit driven. Pfizer made nine billion in profits last year, so total profits over its entire portfolio of health technology. This year, so far, Pfizer has made two billion off of covid vaccines.

MG: What about the issue? I mean, part of this, I guess, is tied to profit? There are also these concerns that if you waive the IP rights, that would deter companies from investing in vaccine development in future, that these companies have made a lot of money, but they also spent a lot of money to try and get to the point where there are vaccines that can go into people's arms. What would you say in the face of that?

SR: Well, I mean, I'd say two things. I think we need to remember that this trip's waivers is, as you rightly said, asking to temporarily suspend IPs and patents. And it's very specific to this covid-19 crisis. So that's really important. But pharmaceutical companies have used public funds to develop covid-19 vaccines, and that's a fact. Public funds have played an important role in incentivising innovation, that's a fact. I mentioned Moderna, who got five billion in public subsidies from the US. The majority, over 80 percent of Moderna's funding to develop its innovative MRNA technology came from public funding. And we have to remember that MRNA has been in development for the last decade or so. Right. So this covid crisis, and this huge investment in money, public money has really propelled and spurred some of the great work that scientists have been doing. AstraZeneca's ninety seven percent publicly funded. Right. And none of that is... the profits that they've been making. Hasn't it been going into R&D. Right. So 88 percent of Pfizer's profits in the last year went to shareholders. In 2019 one hundred and four percent of Pfizer's profits went to shareholders. I mean, the list goes on.

MG: Siham it's great to talk to you about this. I really appreciate your perspective on this. Thank you very much.

SR: Thank you so much.

MG: Siham Rayale is Oxfam Canada's policy and advocacy lead on humanitarian and refugee issues and its lead as well on the vaccine campaign. As I mentioned, not everybody is in favour of lifting those patent protections. Andrei Iancu is a partner at the law firm. Irell and Manella served as director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for three years up until January.

MG: Andrei, good morning to you.

ANDREI IANCU: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What's your take on these calls to lift covid-19 vaccine patents? Would that speed up vaccine distribution in your eyes?

AI: No, I don't think it would matter. And in fact, I actually believe it would slow down vaccine distribution. First of all, let me just say that as a general principle at the high level, I agree with the proposition from the People Vaccine Alliance and many others. We all want to create as many vaccines as possible, as many doses as possible, and to distribute them around the world as quickly as possible and to as many folks as possible. So we agree with all that. I certainly do. The question is, how do you get there? And patents and intellectual property are actually part of the solution. Not in any way part of the problem.

MG: OK, so explain that. How is intellectual property and a patent part of the solution?

AI: Yeah, a couple of ways. Well, first of all, you've mentioned a few minutes ago, patents and IP have allowed the huge investments all these years leading up to the vaccine to create them. If you don't have them, we risk not getting that level of investment and innovation for the future pandemic. But more importantly for today and the crisis we have today, what patents allow people to do, these companies to do is to enter into collaboration agreements around the world. Already there have been hundreds of collaboration agreements around the world. As was just mentioned, Johnson and Johnson and the Serum Institute in India, under which agreement India will make a billion doses, at least second only to the United States I'm sorry, AstraZeneca and Serum Institute and major competitors are collaborating Johnson and Johnson and Merck, Pfizer and Novartis. I can keep going in Canada as well. Novavax new vaccine on the horizon with the biologics manufacturing centre of Canada. Hundreds of these, Matt. Without IP these companies would be much more reluctant to enter into these collaboration agreements. And third, most importantly, here what IP allows is the quality manufacturing of these incredibly complicated technologies, incredibly complicated vaccines. As Bill Gates said in your segment, if you allow a free for all, an uncontrolled manufacturing of these vaccines around the world, who's to say that they're going to be safe and who's going to be able to distinguish between the safe ones and the unsafe ones at that point? If we lose control of the intellectual property, already we know that there have been fakes.

MG: I was going to say, what would you say in the face of that? I mean, Siham was saying that there are manufacturers who are making vaccines already, different kinds of vaccines, that they are ready and able to start making these covid vaccines if the vaccines were freed temporarily from their patent. So what would you say to her that those companies are there, they're already making different vaccines and that they would just pivot to be able to make the covid vaccines?

AI: I would say two things, one, where's the evidence for that, right? Where is the evidence that they actually can repurpose their factories to make this extremely complicated vaccine? Keep in mind that the TRIPS agreement that Siham mentions, the TRIPS agreement already allows every single member country, U.S., Canada, India, South Africa, Morocco, as you mentioned, every single one. It allows them to provide for compulsory licences. They have to give notice and all that under the agreement. But they could do it if they wanted to. Why aren't they doing it? It's not easy to do without the original manufacturer in there working it step by step as they are under these collaboration agreements. And second. There are other diseases around the world Matt. We can't just stop making vaccines and medicines for everything else, you still need vaccines for polio, for Ebola, et cetera, et cetera. You can't just say, OK, we're going to stop doing everything around the world and all of a sudden we're all going to start making just this vaccine. One final point on this issue. Today there have been a billion doses made around the world by the end of May. So just within a month, there will be two billion made around the world. By the end of this calendar year, there will be nine to 10 billion doses made under the current systems around the world, enough to vaccinate the entire adult population of the world by the end of this year. The system is working. So Before disrupting this incredibly complex intellectual property system that's actually worked at its peak right now, and delivered vaccines in record time, we need to be really sure that we know exactly what we're doing here and we have the evidence that A, it's necessary and B, it actually will solve the problems I and other IP professionals think is going to have a negative effect if we waive IP rights, not a positive one.

MG: How much of this is about protecting profits? There's a lot of money at stake. And if you waive even temporarily a patent, some of that profits can be diverted.

AI: Well, yes, but to be frank, I don't think this is about profits and I think there is a lot of evidence and Bill Gates mentioned in the clip you had, that there is a lot, especially internationally, of vaccine manufacturing and licencing that is done at cost. This is really not about profits. What this is about is maximising the worldwide output. So what are the real issues here? Because there is an issue, Matt, there's no question. Right. You know. Some countries are getting more doses right now than others for sure, and that should be addressed. What is the main issue? It's really not IP and continuing the discussion on IP hides the real problems, so, for example, one of the main issues is export controls. The economists had an article, I think, just a few days ago about the problem of export controls. The United States has them, the European Union has them. India now has them, many countries have them. So the export controls on both the supplies, the ingredients for these vaccines and talent and people and so on. Countries need to address that. The supply chain for the smallest components to the largest and to the vials. Those issues need to be addressed. Transportation under refrigeration, you know, and regulations by FDA, by the federal drug administrations around the world. Those need to be addressed. Those are the real issues that we should really talk about.

MG: And you don't believe that those are would be addressed if you free those vaccines from the patents?

AI: No, they're completely independent of that, and what I believe is if we free the vaccines from the patents, what companies will do Matt, they will retreat, like I like to say, they will retreat into their trade secrets shells, the way to think about this is think about a trade secret is the opposite of a patent. Right. A trade secret is when the company just keeps everything within its walls secret. Think about the Coca-Cola formula. Right. Coca-Cola has been around for like, what, 100 years or something? It's a secret formula. Nobody knows how to make it. There is no generic Coca-Cola. So companies, if you're not patenting something, you're keeping it within your shell and you're reducing the likelihood that others can collaborate and make it.

MG: Andre, good to speak with you about...

AI: And that is a danger.

MG: We'll leave this there. I appreciate you being here this morning. Thank you very much.

AI: A pleasure, thank you.

MG: Andrei Iancu is a partner at the law firm Irell and Manella, a former director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. As this debate unfolds, co-vax is trying to inoculate as many people in low and middle income countries as possible, which is really what is at the heart of this debate, making sure that the vaccines get to the people who need them the most. The Global Vaccine Sharing Initiative has agreements with vaccine producers to deliver nearly two million doses by end of year. But the third wave is complicating those efforts. Gian Gandhi is a covid-19 vaccine access coordinator at UNICEF Supply. It's a member of covax.

MG: Good morning to you.

GIAN GANDHI: Hi there. Thanks for having me on the show.

MG: Just briefly, I mean, we know of vaccine rates in many countries, including Canada, and people are obsessing over those. What are the vaccine rates in low and middle income countries right now?

GG: It really varies, and part of that is down to the sourcing of vaccine, so those countries that are reliant on covax, of course, are having a slow start, in part because of the vaccine manufacturing challenges and production issues that your previous guests have just been talking about, of course, other countries that have more financial access and are able to secure doses outside of covax, have slightly higher rates. But we're talking I mean, In general, in the poorest countries of the world, the rates of coverage are, you know, less than 1 percent or 1-2, 3 percent at best in many of these countries, a small fraction of what we're seeing in some of the higher-income countries, such as the U.S. or Israel, for example.

MG: Do you think that lifting the patents to these vaccines would help increase the pace of making and distributing those vaccines?

GG: You know, I'm sympathetic to the views of both of the previous guests on this show. I think, you know, we see the intellectual property and all barriers, for that matter, should be removed, but, of course, through voluntary and proactive licencing. But we don't think that that's going to resolve the problem on its own. Unlike drug manufacturers, for example, Vaccine production involves complex processes and multiple inputs. And many of the challenges actually relate to freedom of flow of some of those inputs. And that freedom of flow right now is being constricted by the likes of export barriers that have been put in place by governments. So it's not really a patent issue that’s stopping the scale of production, but actually forms of vaccine nationalism either to keep vaccines within borders or to keep the components necessary for producing them within borders. And of course, I think one of your guests mentioned that, you know, by the end of the year, we could have up to 10 billion doses of vaccine. I think, you know, one of the things that's certainly been identified is, of course, that right now there is an inequal sharing of the doses that are available. And that, you know, really is one of the key problems here is how can we share what's available and in the most equitable way? And that's where we're covax really tries to fill a gap.

MG: Part of this is also about pricing. And just I guess briefly on the patent issue, those who are calling for the lifting or the suspension of those patents say that this would help bring the cost of these doses down, which would make them more accessible to low income countries. Is that true? I mean, would that ensure that the prices remain affordable?

GG: You know, it's an interesting argument and one that I think has often been applied to drugs very successfully, maybe one good example is to perhaps refute that as a blanket statement is the AstraZeneca product, which for starters, AstraZeneca doesn't own the IP for that vaccine. It's actually owned by the University of Oxford. And in their agreement, they have secured that AstraZeneca must supply the vaccine at cost or not for profit basis. Excuse me. So in that instance, we're getting the vaccine on a not for profit basis at the lowest prices globally throughout the world. And, of course, you know, in that instance, it's not really price that's the barriers to these other issues of export authorisations of limited production capacity. So it's a difficult one to make as a blanket statement,

MG: There are vaccines that are being produced. And to your point and the WHO has documented this as well, more than 80 percent of them have gone to high and upper middle income countries. Do you have any indication in that, you know, conversation around oversupply that those countries and people have pointed at Canada as well in terms of the number of vaccines that this country has purchased, the doses that this country has purchased that those countries are willing to share?

GG: Yeah, it's an interesting point, and it's one that I think where we're now starting to see some movement, particularly from G7 countries, so many of the countries in the G7 have secured more doses than they would need. But those numbers have sort of theoretical doses for many of the doses that a country like Canada has secured. The vaccines are still undergoing testing, development, have yet to achieve licensure. So it's not not clear that all G7 countries are sort of benefiting from that largesse. But over the course of this year, should all of the research and development work out, as we would hope it to, there should be excess doses. And what we're seeing now amongst G7 countries is a move to sort of address the inequities. France announced the first donation that actually was received by Mauritania, by the Covax facility this week. And Norway's done the same in recent months and now, of course, the US government has announced that it will be sharing dosis. These are wonderful moves to address vaccine nationalism. In many ways, sharing on an [inaudible] basis is the best remedy for vaccine nationalism. But what we're seeing so far is just the start of something that needs to really happen on a much larger basis. And I guess it's not just scale that needs to kind of play out here. It's not just all of those excess doses materialising, you know, as in when a country like the US has vaccinated all that population. But it actually needs to happen faster. So speed is of the essence. And what I mean by that is, you know, we started this conversation talking about the low rates of coverage and in low and middle income countries. And so those doses are really needed now because the low rates of coverage mean that those at highest risk of exposure, for example, by virtue of their jobs being healthcare workers or teachers or other frontline workers, they are still at risk. And they are, unfortunately, in a situation where they are propagating the disease because they're at high risk and unable to protect themselves fully. And, of course, you know, for UNICEF, this is critical because those frontline workers are what keeps all of these other programmes going against polio, measles, education programmes. So it's critical that we get them protected and so that dose sharing really, you know, it hits home. It's not just about covid that. It's about all the other diseases that we're unable to fully protect ourselves against without workers being covered.

MG: And again, we always say, but the health of the world depends on everybody in the world being healthy, that we are all interconnected in this, right?

GG: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, I think one of the things that I think we've been trying to sort of drive home here is that it's not just about whether you're protected at home within your community or your country, but that actually, you know, if folks abroad are not protected, that's another chance for the virus to both replicate and frankly mutate. And so even a fully vaccinated population in a high-income country, may be at risk from variants that evade the current vaccines. So of course, you know, increasing the levels of coverage in developing countries makes sense both abroad, but certainly at home for the wealthier countries.

MG: Gian good to speak with you about this. Thank you very much. Thank you, Gian Gandhi is a covax coordinator at UNICEF's supply division. That is it for The Current for this Wednesday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Q. The star of Canadian music, Cardinal Official, speaking with Tom Power about the 20th anniversary of an album he put out. Recently named as the inaugural winner of Canada Listen. You'll hear that coming up in just a few moments on CBC Radio One. In the meantime, I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. And we'll talk to you tomorrow.

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