Vaccine equity: A fundamental imperative in the fight against COVID-19
The PLOS Medicine Editors
Abstract
On March 11, 2020, WHO declared the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) a global pandemic. Now, almost 2 years on, COVID-19 continues to cause widespread morbidity, mortality, and disruption, both directly and indirectly, on a global scale. The speed at which multiple effective vaccines were developed is a remarkable achievement and testament to scientific advances and collaboration. However, numerous barriers to global vaccination efforts have left 47% of the world's population unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated to date, with huge disparities between countries in the proportion of fully vaccinated individuals ranging from 0% to 95% Barriers such as vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccine movements have hindered the progress of vaccination efforts, and have been perpetuated by fears over vaccine safety and the spread of misinformation and disinformation, despite the wealth of evidence supporting the benefits of vaccination. Adding to the evidence on vaccine safety, in this issue of PLOS Medicine, William Whiteley [2] and Steven Kerr [3] and respective colleagues have shown in large-scale observational studies that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is associated with no more than a small elevated risk of intracranial venous thrombosis and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, respectively. The risks of cerebral venous thromboses are far greater following COVID-19 infection