COVAX, an international initiative tasked with ensuring more equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, aims to redress this imbalance by securing deals that send shots to low-income countries free of charge. (Pexels photo) Lopsided distribution will cost lives, ding the global economy and perpetuate the pandemic Months before the first COVID-19 vaccine was even approved, wealthy nations scrambled to secure hundreds of millions of advance doses for their citizens. By the end of 2020, Canada bought up 338 million doses, enough to inoculate their population four times over. The United Kingdom snagged enough to cover a population three times its size. The United States reserved over 1.2 billion doses, and has already vaccinated about 14 percent of its residents.