Whatever vaccine arrives first, and whenever it arrives, the only certainty is that its production will be scarce and will confront us with serious ethical and health dilemmas. Mass manufacturing of a vaccine requires a deployment of industrial power of such magnitude that it will take years to produce the billions of doses that the world needs to get rid of Covid-19. For a time, there will be no choice but to stingily distribute the precious elixir. Who should receive it first? All the citizens of a rich country that financed the development of the drug? Or a select group of people from all countries? And in the second case, what people? The World Health Organization (WHO) and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) of the United States have proposed provisional priority guidelines (WHO, NASEM) that governments should seriously consider.
