A SCOPING REVIEW OF ETHICAL ARGUMENTS ABOUT COVID-19 VACCINE MANDATES
A SCOPING REVIEW OF ETHICAL ARGUMENTS ABOUT COVID-19 VACCINE MANDATES

Author(s): Zia Haider, Annie Silleck, Dónal O’Mathúna
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Social Sciences, Sociology, Health and medicine and law
Published by: Институт друштвених наука
Keywords: COVID-19 vaccines; vaccine mandates; ethics; herd immunity; public good
Summary/Abstract: Vaccines are important public health interventions to prevent diseases and counteract pandemics. The development of COVID-19 vaccines during the most intense and devastating period of the COVID-19 pandemic was a remarkable scientific achievement. Yet the availability of the COVID-19 vaccines raised challenging public health and ethical questions about how these would be made available. The morbidity and mortality when the vaccines first became available suggested that COVID-19 vaccine mandates should be introduced to achieve maximal vaccination rates. Ethical arguments were raised in support of such mandates, and other ethical arguments were presented to oppose such mandates. We undertook a scoping review to identify and summarize the main ethical arguments used for and against mandating COVID-19 vaccines. Eligible articles were published in English between January 2020 and 25 September 2021. We extracted the ethical issues and analyzed them to develop themes and subthemes. The main ethical arguments for and against COVID-19 vaccines are summarized here.

• Details
• Contents