[nudephil (OP)]

Listener Mark raises the question:

The WHO stated over the last few days that the COVID vaccines should be rolled out equitably. But surely this is not scientifically valid for the world - surely the way to distribute it at a world level is first to distribute it to countries where a worrisome variant appears in large numbers, i.e. the UK, Brazil, South Africa? This will benefit the whole world by stopping more infectious variants spreading to the rest of the world, and also preventing these particular variants mutating much further away from the original.

Obviously the whole population including all children should be vaccinated as far as possible in these countries before spare vaccines are given to other countries. This will be the most effective distribution of vaccines as far on a global level surely. Then to countries that are being hardest hit with the highest number of deaths per 100,000.

[Bored chemist]

The places where they don't vaccinate today are the places where they find the new variant tomorrow.

[alancalverd]

Variants appear all over the place all the time, but not everyone has the ability to identify them, hence they get named for the place where they are identified but that may not be the place where they are most prevalent.

[set fair]

We're still flying so the variants will spread anyway. There is also the risk that if a variant has some resistance to vaccines, then vaccinating where the variant is rife will hasten resistance.

If we stopped flying and if we had a vaccine which included the new variants then I agree vaccinating where there are new variants makes sense. But even then, as has been said above - where the variant is discovered isn't nescessarily were it is most prevalent.

[alancalverd]

The current outbreaks of "South Africa" variant throughout the UK seem to have no connection with foreign travel or each other.

[set fair]

The current outbreaks of "South Africa" variant throughout the UK seem to have no connection with foreign travel or each other.

Their have been mutations around since the start and it is possible that they have only come to the fore and prospered when a significant number of people have (some) immunity to the old variant. HIV is a fast mutator and there are believed to be 10^16 different HIV genomes inside people. I have heard Paul Bieniasz claim that a single CoV2 swab can contaian a billion variants.