“The fact is, it’s not about sharing. It’s about allowing us access to the production capacity. If you loosen the contracts so that the supply capacity can be released to other nations, that is all we ask.”

As part of the Milken Institute Future of Health Summit, CNBC’s Meg Tirrell spoke to José Manuel Barroso, Board Chair of Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, and Strive Masiyiwa, the African Union Special Envoy to the African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team. They discussed the fact that while the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines has been an extraordinary scientific success, the international distribution of, and access to, vaccines has been a failure in many cases. Many countries do not yet have sufficient quantities of the vaccines, raising many important scientific, policy, and moral questions. As the speakers emphasized, how vaccines are distributed globally will not only impact the long-term duration and subsequent waves of the pandemic, but will also inform the pace at which the world economy recovers from the COVID-19 downturn.