Allocating Limited Vaccine Supplies

Limited supplies of Covid-19 vaccines mean that hard choices need to be made. There have been a variety of different national strategies for deciding who should be priorities for the first doses. Each method of allocation raises health, economic and ethical issues. One way to balance these different concerns is to have a reserve system where they are allocated to multiple categories with different priorities within each. This approach, developed by Boston College Professors Tayfun Sönmez, M. Utku Ünver, M. Bumin Yenmez and MIT Professor Parag A. Pathak, is explained in Economics Observatory.