Vaccine Nationalism and the Dynamics and Regulation of SARS-CoV-2

Science August 17, 2021: DOI: 10.1126 / science.abj7364

Commentary

This study will be an investigation of the relationship between vaccines and nationalism.

The vaccine is considered to be a powerful tool to mitigate the enormous public health and economic costs of the ongoing global problem of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

However, issues such as inadequate vaccine distribution in different countries and the potential epidemiological and evolutionary effects of "vaccine nationalism" are being investigated and analyzed, extending previous models to include a simple scenario of stockpiling between two regions.

In general, if the vaccine is widely available and the immunity conferred by the vaccine is strong, it can be predicted that sharing doses will minimize the total number of cases across the region.

Depending on evolutionary assumptions and the availability of vaccines, many subtleties arise when the populations and infection rates in different regions differ.

If the decline of innate immunity contributes the most to evolutionary potential, then persistent infection in low access areas may increase the likelihood of antigenic evolution, leading to the emergence of novel variants with global impact on epidemiological features.

These results underscore the importance of rapid and equitable vaccine distribution for the global control of pandemics.