VALLEY CITY, N.D. (NewsDakota.com) – In a recent interview with Steve Urness on KOVC, Dr. James Buhr, Medical Director for Barnes County, shared the following update on COVID-19 vaccine.

“It is not known for sure why the country of India, which had previously had only a modest amount of COVID-19, recently had a severe outbreak. Certainly some of the reason was the occurrence of many large gatherings. A recent radio news broadcast suggested however, that there may have been a change in the virus to make it more infectious. Even if this was not the cause in this case, it is well-known that every time the virus spreads from one person to another, there is a possibility of a mutation.

Those mutations will almost certainly reach our shores, no matter where they start. It is already accepted almost as a certainty that eventually need a booster vaccine because of mutations.

For now, what is needed is to shut down transmission as much as possible by getting as many people vaccinated as possible. This is true not just in the U.S. but in the whole world.

What about countries that do not have the resources to provide free vaccine for everyone as our country and other
wealthy countries have done? One answer is the international health system, World Health Organization and its vaccination arm, GAVI. Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization  is a public–private global health partnership with the goal of increasing access to immunization in poor countries.

Early in the pandemic GAVI realized that the normal process of developing a vaccine would not be fast enough, so they created the COVAX program. The normal procedure of developing a vaccine on a very small scale and then for each company to decide if they wanted to invest in manufacture was not going to work, so COVAX and the partners,
the World Health Organization, UNICEF, World Bank, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation put in enough funds so that research and production could happen simultaneously. Fortunately it worked, and there are safe vaccines ready to give, with a goal of having 2 billion doses available by the end of 2021.

As people in the US are aware, our government subsidized the distribution and administration of the vaccine, so that everyone is able to get it free, and no one had to hold back because they couldn’t afford it. This was expensive, but
high-income countries were able to do it. In low- and middle-income countries however, this is a big problem, because it still must be distributed and given free. This means help from the international organizations such as COVAX and its partners. Not to do so runs the risk of having enough spread of the virus that variants develop which can defeat the vaccine and
again spread to the entire world, including the U.S.

There is not much that individuals in our country can do except to get immunized where it is available, to recognize the importance of international health organizations such as the World Health Organization, and to support them whenever possible.

We must never drop out of the World Health Organization again and the U.S .and other wealthy countries must continue to put in sufficient funding, for the health of the world and also recognize that this is for our own health.”

The full interview is available below.