Jean-Louis Excler, Lois Privor-Dumm, Peter Hotez, Dame Sarah Gilbert, Didi Thompson,Salim Abdool Karim, Soumya Swaminathan, Jerome H Kim

Governments around the world have employed disparate strategies – ranging from near total lockdowns to more laissez-faire regulations – to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. While the benefits and drawbacks of these approaches provoke heated debate among policymakers and the general public alike, one thing is clear: widespread vaccination is the most effective weapon in the fight against COVID-19. The development and emergency-use approval of not just one, but several vaccines in a matter of months are stunning feats that have prevented millions of deaths and hospitalizations while averting hundreds of billions of dollars in healthcare costs worldwide.1 Yet despite this success, the production, allocation and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines has been far from perfect, with many low- and middle-income countries still strug- gling to vaccinate even a fraction of their populations.