‘Jabs must reach needy populations’

To mitigate health inequities and promote social justice, coronavirus vaccines need to get to underserved populations and hard-toreach communities.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are a great start that should be celebrated, but they rely on a complicated supply chain of freezers and temperature-controlled shipping methods called the “cold chain.”

That reliance on the cold chain raises equity and social justice concerns, since many parts of the world cannot support one.

Researchers are working hard on vaccines that can avoid the logistical and economic nightmare of cold chain delivery.

In poorer areas, more remote places and where the daytime temperature is high and electricity is unavailable or spotty, there are no means to keep vaccines at low temperatures.

There may, in fact, be no roads – let alone airports – in many of these places. And even if roads exist, they may be impassable at certain times of the year or inaccessible for political reasons. Vaccines are coming that do not require ultralow-temperature storage. Some companies – like AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson – are working on vaccines that need only refrigeration and not storage at freezer temperatures. The jabs should be available in a few months and could greatly expand vaccine reach.

► Ford is professor and chair of Biomedical and Nutritional Sciences, University of Massachusetts Lowell

► Schweik is professor of environmental conservation, University of Massachusetts Amherst