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As clinicians, we are bound by a set of ethical principles that compel us to deliver limited resources according to clinical need. Not according to whether we like the patient, how rich they are, where they live, or the colour of their skin.
Allocating jabs according to clinical need has been relatively uncontentious in the UK, and we have now covered the majority of the high-risk population. Over the next few months GP surgeries will be invited to vaccinate the final risk group: healthy adults under 50 years.
There are limited global stocks of vaccine for 2021. While we jab healthy 25-yearolds (with a 1/500 000 risk of death),1 many countries will not receive enough doses to cover even 1% of their populations.2
Before we start vaccinating young and healthy Brits, we need to pause to ask how far our duty of care extends.
In posing this question I’m very aware that I have already received two doses, and therefore I do not personally bear the full risks of slowing the vaccination campaign. And I still feel mixed about the right course of action. But before rolling out the final phase we — as a primary care community — need to pause and consider if we are enabling, endorsing, and co-perpetrating a form of pernicious ‘me-first’ nationalism that condemns vulnerable populations to avoidable death.
Notes
Competing interests
I have received two doses so I would not personally experience the same degree of increased risk as my non-vaccinated peers should the UK slow or postpone vaccination of healthy younger adults. I consult for the World Health Organization and have previously called on the UK Government to send vaccine doses overseas through letters in the Financial Times and BMJ, in my role as Director of Healthier Systems Ltd.
- © British Journal of General Practice 2021
