Vaccine stockpile sharing for selfish objectives.

ABSTRACT: The COVAX program aims to provide global equitable access to life-saving vaccines. Despite calls for increased sharing, vaccine protectionism has limited progress towards vaccine sharing goals. For example, as of April 2022 only ~20% of the population in Africa had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose. Here we use a two-nation coupled epidemic model to evaluate optimal vaccine-sharing policies given a selfish objective: in which countries with vaccine stockpiles aim to minimize fatalities in their own population. Computational analysis of a suite of simulated epidemics reveal that it is often optimal for a donor country to share a significant fraction of its vaccine stockpile with a recipient country that has no vaccine stockpile. Sharing a vaccine stockpile reduces the intensity of

SUBMITTER: Shivam S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10021782 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature