WP22/05: Global Equity in COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution: Do New Zealanders support vaccine nationalism?

Working Paper 22/05

Komathi Kolandai
Barry Milne
Martin von Randow
Chris Bullen
Samantha Marsh

In 2020, many commentators raised concerns about the inequity in global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.“Vaccine nationalism” describes the “my country first” approach to the development and distribution of vaccines (Weintraub, et al., 2020) and the excessive hoarding of doses (Riaz, et al., 2021; Su, et al., 2021). For instance, in December 2020, Canada had ordered a stockpile of COVID-19 vaccines sufficient to vaccinate each Canadian five times over (Su, et al., 2021). Likewise, the US, the UK, and Australia had ordered surplus vaccine stocks (Su, et al., 2021). Such purchases were made possible through laws that enabled countries “to secure priority access to future vaccines through Advance Purchase Agreements” with vaccine developers (Phelan, et al., 2020, p800).

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, was quoted to have referred to inequities in COVID-19 vaccine policies as a “catastrophic moral failure” and to vaccine nationalism as “self-defeating because it would push up prices”, “encourage hoarding” and ultimately, “prolong the pandemic” (BBC News, 2021). From a scientific perspective, globally inequitable access to vaccines means opportunities for the virus to evolve into more contagious and possibly vaccine-resistant variants through its prolonged transmissions in unvaccinated populations (Daalder, 2021; Noy & Neuberger, 2021).

While the simultaneous global demand for COVID-19 vaccines was unprecedented, “vaccine nationalism” is not new. During the 2009 swine flu outbreak, available vaccines were monopolised by high-income countries and shared with poorer countries only after meeting national needs (Weintraub, et al., 2020). The prolonging of the present pandemic, as anticipated by Dr Ghebreyesus and other experts, suggests that there may be an essential lesson to be learned from this historical event where nationalism appears to conflict with morality and science. However, public members have had next to no say in this government-level decision making. Without prior hypotheses, in this study, we will address the following research questions:

1. Is vaccine nationalism something held by the New Zealand public?
2. Which, if any, demographic variables (e.g. gender, age, education, employment sector) predict vaccine nationalism?
3. Is vaccine nationalism or the lack thereof associated with confidence in the Government within the context of how the COVID-19 pandemic was handled in New Zealand?

Question sets embedded in the ISSP Health and Health Care 2022 survey; data collection to end 30 June 2022.

International Social Survey Programme

Social Attitudes Survey New Zealand

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