COVID-19 Vaccine Equity, Distribution, and Cases in Global and Non-Global South Countries

Abstract

The rapid development of vaccines against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has made an important contribution to reducing both viral transmission and disease burden. In this study, we tracked COVID-19 vaccine equity, distribution, and cases in global and non-global southern countries using country-level data from our World in Data using event study analysis. We used data from 149 Global South countries and 59 Non-Global South countries between January 2020 and May 2022 and compared the vaccine distributions between Global South countries and Non-Global South countries. All non-Global South countries and 90.32% of Global South countries had universally available vaccines. The median time since the introduction of the first COVID-19 vaccine in the Global South was almost eight weeks later than that in non-Global South countries. The median number of people fully vaccinated per hundred (68.8 vs. 50.31) and the total number of boosters administered per hundred (45.7 vs. 13.02) were greater in non-Global South countries than in Global South countries. The results of the two-way fixed effects models show a positive association between new COVID-19 cases or deaths and a measure of COVID-19 exposure, including COVID-19 cases in the previous period, COVID-19 vaccination uptake in the previous period, and the government response stringency index. The event study analysis does not demonstrate significantly different trends in event time around the first COVID-19 vaccination rollout. These findings indicate that types of causal inference questions in complex systems such as pandemics are difficult to address, and it is important to supplement regression analysis with descriptive analysis. JEL Code: I12; I14; I18