Making a COVID-19 vaccine that works for everyone: ensuring equity and inclusivity in clinical trials.
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) mortality and morbidity have been shown to increase with deprivation and impact non-White ethnicities more severely. Despite the extra risk Black, Asian and Minority Ethnicity (BAME) groups face in the pandemic, our current medical research system seems to prioritise innovation aimed at people of European descent. We found significant difficulties in assessing baseline demographics in clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines, displaying a lack of transparency in reporting. Further, we found that most of these trials take place in high-income countries, with only 25 of 219 trials (11.4%) taking place in lower middle- or low-income countries. Trials for the current best vaccine candidates (BNT162b2, ChadOx1, mRNA-173) recruited 80.0% White participants. Underrepresentation of BAME groups in medical research will perpetuate historical distrust in healthcare processes, and poses a risk of unknown differences in efficacy and safety of these vaccines by phenotype. Limiting trial demographics and settings will mean a lack of global applicability of the results of COVID-19 vaccine trials, which will slow progress towards ending the pandemic.
Date Issued
2021-02-24
Date Acceptance
2021-02-15
Citation
Global Health Action, 2021, 14 (1), pp.1-7
ISSN
1654-9880
Publisher
Co-Action Publishing
Start Page
1
End Page
7
Journal / Book Title
Global Health Action
Volume
14
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33627051
Subjects
Covid-19
clinical trials
ethnic minorities
health equity
vaccines
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
United States
Date Publish Online
2021-02-24