COVER

With the rapid development of candidate vaccines for COVID-19, this project will identify and provide guidance on a range ethical issues arising in the development and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines. Over the next six months, the COVER project will concentrate on the ethics of vaccine research and development-including phase 3 trial design and equitable inclusion of special populations in the research agenda, with a particular focus on pregnant women as well as population groups that have or likely will experience disproportionate burden from COVID-19. This project will also conduct formative landscaping work on the ethical challenges and tradeoffs in the allocation and deployment of vaccines, both globally and within nations. This work will lay the groundwork for normative guidance and mathematical models to best inform policymaking once efficacious vaccines become available for wider use, with explicit consideration and assessment of how various approaches will not only impact the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic overall, but also how the benefits of vaccination will be fairly distributed across different population subgroups. In addition, the COVER project will begin to address ethical issues of COVID-19 vaccine development and deployment specific to Africa, with a concentrated body of work in Nigeria.