Ethical allocation of scarce vaccine doses: The Priority-Equality protocol.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Whenever vaccines for a new pandemic or widespread epidemic are developed, demand greatly exceeds the available supply of vaccine doses in the crucial, initial phases of vaccination. Rationing protocols must then fulfill a number of ethical principles balancing equal treatment of individuals and prioritization of at-risk and instrumental subpopulations. For COVID-19, actual rationing methods used a territory-based first allocation stage based on proportionality to population size, followed by locally-implemented prioritization rules. The results of this procedure have been argued to be ethically problematic.

Methods

We use a formal-analytical approach arising from the mathematical social sciences which allows to investigate whether any allocation methods (known or

SUBMITTER: Alos-Ferrer C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9792380 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature