Here’s how to achieve vaccine equity and distribute boosters in tandem

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization called on all countries, including and especially the United States, to put a pause on the distribution of COVID-19 vaccine booster shots in order to increase the global supply of vaccines and expand vaccine equity. 

To be sure, global vaccine equity is in fact an urgent issue that needs to be addressed — as just 1 percent of citizens in low-income countries are vaccinated — in order for the pandemic to truly end.

In their statement, the World Health Organization expressed the need for a “reversal from the majority of vaccines going to high-income countries, to the majority going to low-income countries.” 

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki responded to this call for a moratorium by labelling it a “false choice,” arguing that the U.S. can still administer booster shots while simultaneously donating to the global supply of vaccines.

Yet, the only way that vaccine equity and the distribution of booster shots can truly move in tandem — rather than against one another — is if the Biden administration, Congress and the World Health Organization follow an approach that does not encumber the public-private partnerships involved in this effort.

This means removing the trade barriers and regulations that make it more difficult to make and distribute vaccines worldwide. This is a critical step to closing the global vaccine access gap, while also ensuring that booster doses can be developed and distributed effectively and efficiently.

However, if the Biden administration and the World Health Organization fail to take this approach, we will be in a lose-lose situation — we will not be able to make vaccines accessible in the developing world, nor will we be able to develop and distribute vaccine booster shots, which are likely necessary to fend off the delta variant and other emerging variants of the virus.

In the United States, the COVID-19 vaccine’s development under the Trump administration and the distribution under the Biden administration is the essence of what a public-private partnership can achieve without significant barriers to development and distribution. 

To that end, on an international scale, the United States and the World Health Organization must work to make it as seamless as possible for the global biopharmaceutical industry and governments around the world to work to scale up manufacturing and production and establish mechanisms for vaccine dose sharing.

The global community recognizes that there is a lack of both raw materials and expertise worldwide. Vaccine manufacturers rely on supplies from a handful of different countries, yet, tariffs and export restrictions considerably slow the transfer of these supplies. Further, even if all the necessary ingredients to the vaccine are in one place, there is a lack of highly skilled technical workers to make the vaccines in many parts of the world.

As a solution, some in the international community — including the Biden administration earlier this spring — proposed waiving intellectual property patents of the vaccine as a solution to vaccine equity.

Yet, as I have previously written, this approach overlooks the real challenges of vaccine distribution. Giving away the formulas for our effective, American-developed vaccines to developing countries, who lack the ability to safely manufacture the billions of doses needed, is bad policy — not to mention potentially dangerous.

Ultimately, experts widely agree that, in order to combat the pandemic, vaccines must be widely available and accessible; further, many are beginning to agree that booster shots of the vaccine may be necessary to defend against emerging variants. 

And make no mistake, allowing public-private partnerships to work together to scale up manufacturing and production worldwide is the only way to achieve both of these goals — and ultimately, is the only way we can save lives around the world and put an end to the pandemic.

Douglas E. Schoen is a political consultant who served as an adviser to President Clinton and to the 2020 presidential campaign of Michael Bloomberg. His new book is “The End of Democracy? Russia and China on the Rise and America in Retreat.”