Dr. Christine Kelly:

Yes. A good point has been made regarding the human cost of this. Mr. Clarken referred in his opening statement to how bad the scenario is regarding global vaccination now. Many countries still have vaccination rates of less than 10%. WHO guidance is that 10% of a country's population must be vaccinated to cover the most vulnerable people. These are people we started vaccinating here in Ireland in December 2020. We are talking about healthcare workers, elderly people and immunosuppressed people. Those categories of people still have not had any vaccine administered in some countries around the world. This hits me particularly hard, because as a healthcare worker, I understand how difficult it is to grapple with these issues of going in to treat people when you have not been vaccinated yourself and of watching people potentially getting very sick and dying from a vaccine-preventable disease. I am grateful for that context having been brought in because this is the key aspect we must remember.

We now have enough production and things like that, but it is important to note, however, that this delay in rolling out vaccines has already had a major impact. It is fair to say we have failed in global vaccine roll-out. Large parts of the world have not received any vaccines at all. The consequences of this are increased disease and death from a vaccine-preventable disease, increased transmission and prolongation of the pandemic. Also worrying for me is our global health security, our ability to manage infections and prevent new infections and new variants, should they crop up. All of this has been impacted by the delay. It is not okay to sit here and state we had a very good programme in Ireland and we now have lots of production, because we are missing out on that crucial time when we missed doing this properly. It is important for us to understand the impact this has had. It has had an impact not only from a clinical point of view but also from a point of view of confidence in vaccine programmes. Therefore, if we are talking about hesitancy and things like that, much of that has been driven by the fact there has been unreliable vaccine supply for a long time. People were worried that some of the vaccines were expired. Some had to be destroyed. All these things also undermine global confidence in vaccines, which is a real issue for us at the minute too.