As wealthier countries speed up COVID-19 vaccination programs, public health experts including ICAP’s Wafaa El-Sadr, MD, MPH, MPA, continue to emphasize the importance of equitable distribution around the world. Dr. El-Sadr, director of ICAP and professor of epidemiology at Columbia University in New York, said the highest priority is to develop a system that tracks exactly where each vial is, its destination, and its source.

“I think we don’t want to be in a situation where one place has more supply than the demand and another place has the demand but not the supply. We need to be nimble and flexible,” El-Sadr said. “To be able to act quickly, you need to have data, [and] I think that’s quite doable.”