Solidarity on future vaccine

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As countries in the EU, including Malta, see a general decline in COVID-19 cases and take baby steps towards opening up their economies, a surer step towards stabilisation will undoubtedly come with the development of a widely available vaccine.   An international conference chaired by Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, recently brought together world leaders – with the notable exception of US President Donald Trump – to raise billions of euros for a mass-produced vaccine to defeat the virus. Countries agreed, in a show of global solidarity, that the vaccine was the best chance of beating the disease. While clearly not a competition bet-ween countries, there is concern that Trump’s non-attendance signals an approach that might lead to a counter-productive trans-Atlantic race instead of collaboration. The hunt for a vaccine cannot be a competition between countries when, as Boris Johnson of Britain rightly said, “It’s humanity against the virus… together we will prevail”.  Today, several months after the World Health Organisation confirmed the novel coronavirus pandemic, Europe remains in the frontline of the battle to contain it. Five of the six...