Two years after the first confirmed COVID-19 case in the world, a few waves and surges of the pandemic have moved across various regions. While the effects of COVID-19 are being felt globally, the pandemic continues to disproportionately affect lower-income countries, exacerbating existing global health disparities. As the pandemic lingers, the true total and intergenerational impact may not be known for months and years to come, particularly for LICs that have endured the effects for longer and may not have accurate (...) and comparable data due to limited resources for data collection and analysis.As various high-income countries implement vaccination requirements, approve and encourage booster doses, and... (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has provoked new interest in the notion of vulnerability and in identifying alternative approaches for responding to vulnerable patients and populations during health emergencies. In this paper, I argue that the autonomy-based approach (the most dominant approach in bioethics) to responding to vulnerability during health emergencies is deficient because it focuses only on the interests, values, and decisions of the individual patient. It overly emphasizes respect for autonomy and not respect for the patient as it does not (...) consider the patient as a social and relational agent. Indeed, relational approaches to autonomy like the feminist and indigenous sub-Saharan African ethical approaches are promising alternatives. In this essay, I use the indigenous African relational approach to autonomy as an example of an alternative method which can be used to respond to vulnerability during a global health emergency like COVID-19. (shrink)