WHO AND COVІD-19: FROM THE PROBLEM OF INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY TO THE GREAT GAME AROUND THE VACCINE

Abstract

The article considers the activities of the World Health Organization (WHO) in a pandemic caused by the spread of coronavirus infection (Covіd-19). Attempts by WHO and existing international formats to establish cooperation and coordination in confronting the new global threat can be traced. It states that in the face of many uncertainties of the consequences of coronavirus infection and the peculiarities of its proliferation, national governments have returned to the tools of barrier policy and border closures, making it difficult to coordinate actions within the global community. The factors influencing the state of global solidarity and the policy of the world’s leading players in WHO are analyzed. The focus is on the factor of U.S. — China relations, within which the dominant political novel is the Chinese footprint in Covid history and on factor of European strife observed between EU countries during the critical period of functioning of national healthcare systems.
The actions of the governments of individual EU countries, Russia and the United States in stimulating national pharmacological corporations to create a vaccine for Covid infection and the problem of the information company regarding large-scale vaccination of the population are revealed.