As more Covid-19 vaccines come to market, who will decide who gets which vaccine, both internationally and within countries? The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious respiratory disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic in 2020, and since that time, the pandemic has had adverse impacts on society, like the death of over four million people in 2019. To reduce COVID-19 spread and costs, different vaccines have been developed for use in other parts of the world. Governments are required to ensure access of their people to safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines; however, the gauge and complexity of allocation, distribution, and prioritization of the vaccines have presented a significant challenge. Emergencies and corruption go hand in hand, especially in times of crisis; thus, the distribution of COVID-19 during the pandemic has been associated with corruption risks which can lead to substandard and falsified vaccines, theft, black market, and unequal distribution. Corruption has prevented people’s access to safe and effective vaccines, especially the most vulnerable and marginalized groups. Due to the corruption risks associated with the COVID-19 vaccine value chain, the United Nations Convention against corruption should provide a solid global framework for mitigating the risks.

The corruption issue in access to COVID-19 vaccines is a significant concern to both developed and developing countries. The developing nations are the most affected by this issue, as shown in Table 1 below, because they are primarily affected by corruption; thus, they cannot be overlooked when addressing the corruption issue.

Table 1: Regional-Level Corruption (2022) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-022-18536-0

CPI is the Corruption Perception Index (0-Highly Corrupt to 100-Clean), while GCI is the Global Corruption Index (0-Low risk to 100-High risk). These nations are the most exposed to corruption due to their shadow economies, deficient healthcare, and poor education systems. They have unstable economies that cannot adequately respond to crises compared to developed countries. In addition, another factor that accelerates corruption in COVID-19 vaccination is the quality of health systems. The health sector is predisposed to corruption; thus, during the pandemic, the governments have increased spending on the health sector, making them more vulnerable to corruption (Farzanegan et al. 2). In addition, corruption is a significant concern in the vaccination process from production, allocation, and distribution of COVID-19, which has led to compromising transparency. Early approvals and the introduction of vaccines have caused the production of substandard and falsified vaccines. These early approvals are associated with those obtained through bribery. Also, there is an unequal distribution of COVID-19 vaccines whereby the developed nations have access to them compared to developing nations with significant challenges accessing the vaccines. The developed countries have infrastructure that can support fair and equal distribution of vaccines, but developing nations like Central African countries lack this infrastructure to facilitate equal distribution of vaccines.

Another evidence of corruption in different countries during the COVID-19 pandemic is vaccine hesitancy related to trust. The refusal to accept the vaccination is associated with long-standing corruption, making people lack confidence in governments. For example, in Ukraine, in a recent poll by the Kyiv Institute of Sociology, 60% of the respondents said that they did not want COVID-19 vaccines because they did not have trust in the government. In addition, corruption is a significant concern. It has shown itself during the pandemic in organizational facts in ways like inadequate policies, weak management and supervision or control procedures, inadequate resources, and lack of transparen