Global experts have called for the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines in order to end the pandemic.

The academic journal The Lancet on Friday issued on article online titled "Challenges in ensuring global access to COVID-19 vaccines: production, affordability, allocation and deployment."

The authors said the pandemic is unlikely to end until there is a global roll-out of vaccines that protect against severe disease and preferably drive herd immunity.

They argued that vaccines need to be produced at scale, priced affordably and allocated globally so they are available where needed and widely deployed in local communities.

The article's main author Olivier Wouters from the London School of Economics and Political Science said that manufacturers have successfully developed COVID-19 vaccines in less than 12 months — an extraordinary achievement, given that it typically takes a decade or longer to develop new vaccines.

But he said the world now needs more doses than it has done for any other vaccine in history, in order to inoculate enough people to ensure global immunity.

The paper also noted that while the World Health Organization has created a global allocation mechanism called the COVAX Facility, the threat remains that national procurement strategies might leave COVAX with an inadequate supply.