Inequities in the global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines have raised concerns surrounding their accessibility in lower-income countries. As of April 2021, countries in the Global North have administered by far the largest share of vaccines, while many countries in the Global South have not yet been able to administer a single dose. As a result of the patchwork accessibility of vaccines, a new, ethically questionable phenomenon has arisen: vaccine tourism.
Vaccine tourism is the process of crossing national and subnational boundaries to receive a COVID-19 vaccine before it is available in the traveler’s home community. The phenomenon began in December 2020, when it was reported that travel agencies in India were beginning to advertise trips to Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States dedicated to receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.
As countries continue to approve different vaccine types, vaccine tourism has taken off. In January 2021, visitors to Florida, both from other parts of the United States as well as from Latin America, were reported as receiving the vaccine well before it was available to all native Floridians. Then in February, the British travel agency Knightsbridge Circle, which charges a $35,000 annual membership fee, began advertising trips for members aged 65 and older to receive the Sinopharm vaccine in the United Arab Emirates. More recently, vaccine skepticism among Serbians led the country to open up its vaccination campaign to foreign tourists at the end of March.
Cuba, a country which has weathered the pandemic relatively well but remains at the brink of economic collapse, is rushing to develop its own COVID-19 vaccine with the goal of boosting its economy through vaccine tourism. Should the country’s vaccine, Soberana 2, be approved for widespread use, Cuba anticipates it will be able to vaccinate its entire population and offer inoculations to all foreign travelers upon arrival at Havana’s airport as early as the end of the summer.
The rise in vaccine tourism has led to a number of ethical concerns, namely that wealthier countries with an excess of COVID-19 inoculations are stockpiling shots to boost tourism rather than distributing their extra vaccines to the 67 countries which have not reported a single inoculation. A December 2020 report by the BMJ found that the richest countries in the world, with a combined population representing 14% of the global population, had bought more than 53% of the vaccines available. The report suggests that this inequitable distribution could lead to lower-income countries not becoming fully vaccinated until as late as 2023.
In an interview with Vox, University of Pennsylvania professor of medical ethics and health policy Harald Schmidt agreed that vaccine tourism is problematic, but thinks there are greater problems in the pandemic to address.
“It’s plainly unethical, there’s no question about [it,]” Schmidt said. “[But] we shouldn’t let this distract ourselves from what we really need to discuss, and that’s equitable vaccine allocation. This might be a bit of a sideshow to that.”
The inequitable vaccine allocation that Schmidt highlights takes place both on the macro level with the hoarding of vaccines by richer countries, and on the micro level with the intersection of the pandemic’s effects and societal marginalizations. In the United States, for instance, while Black and Latino Americans are more likely to die from COVID-19 than their White counterparts, both groups have been vaccinated at far lower rates than White Americans.
Given how little data exists on how vaccine tourism directly affects equitable vaccine distribution, there is likely not going to be a huge movement to reject the practice, especially given how global vaccine distribution is increasing. That said, the fact that vaccine tourism even exists is a further example of just how pertinent an issue global inequity remains.
Jacob Sutherland
Jacob is a recent graduate from the University of California San Diego where he majored in Political Science and minored in Spanish Language Studies. He previously served as the News Editor for The UCSD Guardian, and hopes to shed light on social justice issues in his work.