Abstract
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak has resulted in the death of over four million people since late 2019. To reduce the human and economic costs of COVID-19, different vaccines have been developed and distributed across countries. There has been significant cross-country variation in the vaccination of people against COVID-19. In this study, we focus on public corruption to explain the significant cause of cross-country variation in immunization progress. We suggest that countries with a higher degree of public corruption have been less successful in the vaccination of their population, controlling for other important determinants of immunization progress.
Highlights
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak has resulted in the death of over four million people since late 2019
90 countries, we examine the association between corruption and COVID-19 vaccination coverage
Our main dependent variables are the percentage of the population who received at least their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and the percentage of the population who are fully vaccinated, where “fully vaccinated” refers to people who have been fully vaccinated with either a single- or twodose vaccine
Summary
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak has resulted in the death of over four million people since late 2019. There has been significant cross-country variation in the vaccination of people against COVID-19. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has 92% efficacy at preventing the COVID-19 disease for the ancestral type and Alpha variant and 90% for the Beta, Gamma, and Delta variants. Corruption scandals around the vaccine were reported in Lebanon, South Africa and China[14,15] Another example is Iran, which is struggling with significant mortality rates due to COVID-19 and slow vaccination progress. In addition to the recent COVID-19 vaccine scandals, it is worth mentioning that some of the pharmaceutical companies manufacturing the COVID-19 vaccine (AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer) were sued over bribery prior to the pandemic[15] These examples argue for the possible destructive effects of public corruption on the successful vaccination against COVID-19. In this study, using data on the share of the population who have been vaccinated against COVID-19, public corruption, healthcare capabilities and economic indicators from over
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