Ethical allocation of scarce vaccine doses: The Priority-Equality protocol
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Other documents of the author: Alós Ferrer, Carlos; García-Segarra, Jaume; Ginés-Vilar, Miguel
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Title
Ethical allocation of scarce vaccine doses: The Priority-Equality protocolDate
2022Publisher
Frontiers MediaISSN
2296-2565Bibliographic citation
Alós-Ferrer C, García-Segarra J and Ginés-Vilar M (2022) Ethical allocation of scarce vaccine doses: The Priority-Equality protocol. Front. Public Health 10:986776. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.986776Type
info:eu-repo/semantics/articlePublisher version
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.986776/fullVersion
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersionSubject
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 ... [+]
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 COVID19, 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 unknown) fulfill a combination of (ethical) desiderata and, if so, how
they are formulated algorithmically.
Results: Strikingly, we find that there exists one and only one method that
allows to treat people equally while giving priority to those who are worse o.
We identify this method down to the algorithmic level and show that it is easily
implementable and it exhibits additional, desirable properties. In contrast, we
show that the procedures used during the COVID-19 pandemic violate both
principles.
Conclusions: Our research delivers an actual algorithm that is readily
applicable and improves upon previous ones. Since our axiomatic approach
shows that any other algorithm would either fail to treat people equally or fail to
prioritize those who are worse o, we conclude that ethical principles dictate
the adoption of this algorithm as a standard for the COVID-19 or any other
comparable vaccination campaigns. [-]
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Frontiers in Public Health 2022. Dec 13;10:986776Funder Name
Universitat Jaume I | Generalitat Valenciana
Project code
UJI-B2020-16 | AICO/2021/005
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info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
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