Despite being the first year spent entirely during the pandemic, 2021 underlined the strengths of the ecosystem with spinouts raising nearly $39.2bn.
It was arguably optimistic to claim, in our annual review a year ago, that normality would return to the world once vaccines had reached a majority of people. Delta and then Omicron variants have wreaked havoc with people’s and governments’ hopes to resume lives as they once were – and that is nothing to say of a terrifyingly large minority who continue to refuse the vaccine. While booster campaigns have meant that the death toll from the Omicron wave has thankfully been lower than that of earlier peaks, those same campaigns have also underlined the reality that vaccine inequity persists globally.
And that is a problem for everyone: for the pandemic to truly end, it needs to end everywhere. Omicron originated in South Africa, where as of January 24, 2022, still only a third of the population has been fully vaccinated. Africa, in general, is struggling: Rwanda, Botswana, Morocco and…
Thierry Heles
Thierry Heles is the editor of Global University Venturing, host of the Beyond the Breakthrough interview podcast and responsible for the monthly GUV Gazette (sign up here for free).
