Fair Allocation of Vaccines, Ventilators and Antiviral Treatments: Leaving No Ethical Value Behind in Health Care Rationing

Understand

A priority system has traditionally been the protocol of choice for the allocation of scarce life-saving resources during public health emergencies.

• Covid-19 revealed the limitations of this allocation rule.
• Many argue that priority systems abandon ethical values such as equity by discriminating against disadvantaged communities.
• We show that a restrictive feature of the traditional priority system largely drives these limitations.