Covid 19 coronavirus Delta outbreak: Claire Trevett - Ardern's vaccines deal saves face but is it politics over principle?

OPINION:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's hustle to secure more vaccines to fill a short-term supply issue has paid off.

It is a rare triumph for the Government, which has faced repeated criticism about the pace of the rollout.

Ardern was at pains to make sure everybody knew just what a triumph it was.

It was not a matter of walking to the local vaccines shop. An army of foreign affairs officials and politicians plugged away arranging purchase agreements, regulatory hurdles, and the logistics of getting the vaccines here.

Ardern had pitched in, getting on the blower to Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

It was all for the sake of saving face - to fill a lull in the supply over the past two weeks of September before the October Bonanza when bulk supplies from Pfizer will land.

Having promised all year long the rollout would eventually "ramp up", it would have been seen as a failure to push the slow button just as the ramp-up started.

It would have been an even starker failure given Australia knitted up supplies from other countries to push its rollout along.

However, in Ardern's case it is also a triumph of politics over principle.

The first of two deals Ardern has made was with Spain. It was not a surprise: Spain's rollout has topped 70 per cent. Sanchez was one of the first leaders Ardern forged a relationship with. They first met at the UN in New York in 2018. Both were new leaders and had similar political views.

They swapped numbers and stayed in touch.

The second deal is yet to be revealed, but it's a fair bet Ardern has also been on the phone to Canada's PM Justin Trudeau.

Back in July last year, before any vaccines were on the market, Ardern, Sanchez and Trudeau were among seven leaders who clubbed together to issue an open letter calling on their fellow leaders to ensure developing countries got an equal share of vaccines.

The letter, which ran in The Washington Post, began with the words of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres: "None of us are safe until all of us are safe."

It asked global leaders not to pile in and hog vaccines for themselves. It called for a system to allocate vaccines fairly to those who needed them most, regardless of wealth.

Eventually, of course, everybody needed them and it was the richer countries that got them first.

A year and a bit later, some of the same leaders are horse-trading with each other for vaccines, swapping and buying leftover vaccines.

The white heat of domestic politics can be quick to defeat high-minded virtue.

A leader's first priority is usually to look after their own people, and there is a political cost that comes from neglecting that.

But the principle of trying to vaccinate developing countries at the same pace is even more sound now.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announces the deal over vaccines. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The Health Advisory Group led by David Skegg noted the main threat to the effectiveness of vaccines was new variants. Just as Delta had, new variants were likely to come from countries left well behind in the vaccines race.

"It is not at all unlikely that we will be playing a "cat and mouse game", in which vaccines are continually modified ('tweaked') for rich countries to deal with new variants after they arise," it said.

That is not to say that the leaders who signed that letter have done nothing to meet its spirit. Both Spain and New Zealand have promised doses to Covax to distribute.

Ardern has said our excess will go to Pacific neighbours.

In recent months, Spain started to deliver on its promise to donate 22.5 million doses to countries in Latin America and Africa.

But such donations only tend to flow after their own country's rollouts ended.

At least one of those seven leaders may be watching her co-signers with an eyebrow raised. That is Ethiopia's President Sahle-Work Zwede.

Thus far, only 2.5 million doses have been administered in Ethiopia – almost half as many as New Zealand - and enough to fully vaccinate about 1 per cent of its population.