The Importance of Equitable Vaccine Access

What is Equitable Vaccine Access?
The development of safe and effective vaccines is only the first step in a long fight against ending the Coronavirus pandemic. Another crucial part of the equation that needs to be considered is making sure people all around the world are able to access the vaccines once they are mass produced. This is where the idea of equitable vaccine access comes in.?        

One of the core tenants of the human right to healthcare is the right to equal and fair access to treatments. This is perhaps now more relevant than it has been in the last century. Indeed, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) went so far as to list the “mitigation of health inequities” as an overarching ethical principle for allocation of COVID-19 vaccines in the United States.

Here, we will explore what equitable vaccine acces is, why it is important, and examples of inequalities that have been highlighted over the last 10 months of the COVID-19 vaccine roll out.

What is Equitable Vaccine Access?

The development of safe and effective vaccines is only the first step in a long fight against ending the Coronavirus pandemic. Another crucial part of the equation that needs to be considered is making sure people all around the world are able to access the vaccines once they are mass produced. This is where the idea of equitable vaccine access comes in.

How can we ensure that COVID-19 vaccines – regardless of whether we’re talking about the Moderna, AstraZeneca, PfizernBioTech, or any other type – are distributed fairly to all populations around the world? It is a vital question at the intersection of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the Bill of Human Rights, and ensuring we transition into a fair and healthy post-pandemic society.

The realities of the COVID-19 vaccination roll-out has been riddled with inequalities on multiple fronts, such as:

• Global disparities between economically robust and under-resourced countries:?Rich nations quickly bought up more than their fair share of vaccine doses relative to their populations, meaning they’d be able to theoretically vaccinate their population several times over. This phenomenon is known as “vaccine hoarding” or “vaccine nationalism”. By contrast, low- and middle-income countries have struggled to secure enough doses to protect their most at-risk individuals, despite initiatives like?COVAX?meant to support these nations.
• Speed of roll-out: According to?Reuters, at the time of writing, Portugal has fully vaccinated 80% of their population – one of the highest rates in the world. By stark contrast, only 0.5% of the population of Chad has received a first dose, with just 0.1% being fully vaccinated.
• Socio-demographic factors leading to inequalities within the country:?A?survey?jointly carried out by Northwestern, Northeastern, Harvard, and Reutgers in early 2021 showed that education level was a greater predictor of whether Americans were getting vaccinated than race. It is clear then that even within countries or regions, there is a systemic disparity at play that is reflected in vaccine uptake.

The Importance of Equitable Vaccine Access

Fair and equitable vaccine access is of course needed for the successful transition into a post- pandemic world. However, on a more conceptual level, our success in executing such an equitable transition will also serve as a sort of litmus test for our morality as a global society, and a benchmark for future generations when looking back at this moment in human history.

The fact of the matter is that while politics and economics might care for borders, nationalism, and ideology, biology does not. The virus was and is a threat in all corners of the world – until we are all safe from it, no one is safe from it. This sentiment is echoed by Dr. Angela K. Shen, visiting scientist at the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “Vaccine nationalism only helps the virus propagate. In order for a vaccine to work, you need most of society to be protected — and that protection happens when you get everyone vaccinated. So, you want to roll this out to everyone because, inherently, that’s how you protect everyone collectively,” she states in?an interview.

We are already seeing some of the negative consequences of vaccine hoarding – there are some countries that simply don’t have any vaccines at all. These places – also known as vaccine deserts – are the most at-risk of becoming the hotbed for new and more virulent variants of COVID-19.

One such nation is Chad, where just 0.1% of the population have been fully vaccinated. Despite being part of the WHO’s COVAX scheme, they have not received enough vaccines to even cover their frontline health workers.

Even if the vaccines were to arrive – they were promised a batch of Pfizer doses in June – the next challenge becomes storing them. Every vaccine has its own storage requirements, with Pfizer best being kept between -130°F and -76°F,?according to the CDC.

This is a huge challenge in a country like Chad, where such cooling infrastructure is not very well developed, and it isn’t uncommon for daily temperatures to soar over 100°F.Rolling out vaccines in anything but an equitable way risk creating a segregated two-class global society, one vaccinated society able to enjoy a relatively “normal” life within its metaphorical castle walls, and one society without adequate protection, which can lead to new variants of the virus, but can also lead to exclusion from common activities in our global society.

The way policy is moving in the West, with the introduction of vaccine passports and businesses being allowed to?turn away unvaccinated people?from jobs, venues, and social spaces, it isn’t a stretch to imagine activities like live music, eating out, getting certain jobs, and international travel could become reserved for the vaccinated class – i.e. those from more economically developed countries. The only way to prevent this dystopian future is to ensure equitable vaccine access for all.

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