Healthcare inequity

Over recent weeks, as more and more people have been receiving their first and second doses of the COVID-19 vaccines, some countries have been clearly ahead of others.

So and Woo (2020) recently presented an overview of the disproportionate security that high-income countries have in securing COVID-19 vaccine supplies when compared with the rest of the world. The authors stressed the importance of governments and manufacturers in having the power to provide much-needed assurances for the equal distribution of COVID-19 vaccines through greater transparency and accountability over their arrangements.

Several countries prioritised securing vaccine doses to cover their own populations first, despite the need to respond to COVID-19 being possibly greater elsewhere. Facing uncertainty over which vaccines will prove optimally effective, countries with the means to secure future vaccine supplies might insure against these risks by buying more vaccines than they eventually need or can use (So and Woo, 2020).