Department of Political Science

While COVID-19 vaccines provide light at the end of the
tunnel in a difficult time, they also bring forth the complex
ethical issue of global vaccine distribution. The current
unequal global distribution of vaccines is unjust towards
the vulnerable living in low-income countries. A vaccine tax
should be introduced to remedy this. Under such a scheme,
a small fraction of the money spent by a country on vaccines
for its own population would go into a fund, such as
COVAX, dedicated to buying vaccines and distributing them
to the world’s poorest. A vaccine tax would provide a muchneeded injection of funds to remedy the unequal distribution
of vaccines. The tax allows for a distribution that, to a
lesser degree, reflects the ability to pay and is superior to a
donation-based model because it minimises the opportunity
for free-riding.