(Originally published by The Lancet on July 8, 2022) 

Many high-income countries have rapidly pivoted from hard decisions about who may receive COVID-19 vaccines, due to shortages, to equally hard decisions about who must receive them. As lasting containment of COVID-19 remains elusive, many nations—from Costa Rica, to Austria, to Turkmenistan—are turning to vaccination mandates of various kinds.¹ Mandates, however, are controversial in many countries. Austria’s proposed mandate for adults, for example, provoked mass protests. Some objectors argue mandates represent undue encroachment on individual liberty. Some other objectors maintain that mandates will not be an effective policy for COVID-19 because many individuals will seek to evade them, and mandates might erode support for other public health measures such as mask wearing.

(Continue reading the opinion essay on The Lancet’s page here.)