| With the coronavirus pandemic spiraling out of control in India and other developing regions, the United States this week committed to sharing 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine with other countries.
But that’s a drop in the bucket.
The U.S. has bought or contracted to buy more than 1 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines. That’s enough to vaccinate the U.S. population at least twice, with plenty left over.
Medical ethicists say the country has a moral duty to share those doses with other countries. That’s especially true, they said, now that the pandemic is relatively under control in the U.S. while countries like India have been overwhelmed by the virus.
“I do believe that the U.S. is obligated to share vaccines with other countries,” said Keisha Ray, an assistant professor and bioethicist at UTHealth McGovern Medical School in Houston, “especially those countries we might consider poorer countries or what we call underdeveloped countries.”
Arthur Caplan, director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine, agreed. He said the U.S. was “ethically obligated” to share vaccines, pointing to the “horrific death toll and hospitalization tsunami that’s taking place in many countries.”
“Morally,” he said, “we have to help.”
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