Optimal spatial evaluation of a pro rata vaccine distribution rule for COVID-19

The COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) is a World Health Organization (WHO) initiative that aims for an equitable access of COVID-19 vaccines. Despite potential heterogeneous infection levels across a country, countries receiving allotments of vaccines may follow WHO’s allocation guidelines and distribute vaccines based on a jurisdictions’ relative population size. Utilizing economic—epidemiological modeling, we benchmark the performance of this pro rata allocation rule by comparing it to an optimal one that minimizes the economic damages and expenditures over time, including a penalty representing the social costs of deviating from the pro rata strategy. The pro rata rule performs better when the duration of naturally- and vaccine-acquired immunity is short, when there is population mixing, when the supply of vaccine is high, and when there is minimal heterogeneity in demographics. Despite behavioral and epidemiological uncertainty diminishing the performance of the optimal allocation, it generally outperforms the pro rata vaccine distribution rule.