Kai KupferschmidtScience’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.As soon as the first COVID-19 vaccines get approved, a staggering global need will confront limited supplies.
Many health experts say it’s clear who should get the first shots: health care workers around the world, then people at a higher risk of severe disease, then those in areas where the disease is spreading rapidly, and finally, the rest of us.
Such a strategy “saves the most lives and slows transmission the fastest,” says Christopher Elias, who heads the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Development Division. “It would be ludicrous if low-risk people in rich countries get the vaccine when health care workers in.