The detection in South Africa last week of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, and its spread to four continents already, is another wake-up call for governments in high-income and developed countries to the fact that, as World Health Organisation director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus put it, "no country can vaccinate its way out of the pandemic alone". As long as vaccine inequity persists between rich and poor nations, the Covid-19 pandemic will likely drag on, with economic, social and health consequences which even highly vaccinated countries cannot avoid.

Omicron is the fifth variant of concern that has been detected. What should be strikingly obvious by now is that every significant variant that has emerged has come from where there has been uncontrolled transmission of the virus, which in turn has enabled more mutations to occur. One of the main causes of such viral spreads is low vaccination rates. As long as large populations globally remain unvaccinated, the greater the likelihood of new variants emerging - some of which could even compromise the efficacy of existing vaccines, which were developed in response to the original strain of Covid-19. Many health experts have reminded us that Omicron's emergence is a predictable result of vaccine inequity.