Incentivising wealthy nations to participate in the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility (COVAX): A game theory perspective

This paper addresses the task to incentivise wealthy nations to participate in the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility (COVAX). Developing a safe, effective vaccine alone will not be enough to end the pandemic. The vaccine must also be delivered globally at a price affordable to all governments and allocated in a way that maximises immediate and long-term public health impact and simultaneously achieves equity. In previous pandemics, these goals were not achieved. For example, in the 2009 influenza A (H1N1) pandemic, rich countries monopolised the vaccine supply; low-income countries (LICs) and middle-income countries (MICs) received fewer doses much later in the pandemic.

The paper concludes that the proliferation of bilateral deals between richer nations and COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers is a major threat to ensuring global distribution of vaccines and to achieving herd immunity at a global scale. Such deals cannot be stopped, but insights from a game theory analysis suggest ways in which these deals could be configured to potentially improve the global supply of vaccines, by increasing fungibility of investments, enhancing supply-chain harmonisation and articulating principles for such deals.