The Coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc on all our lives. While we are each doing our part of prevent the spread, and while frontline healthcare workers risk their lives to care for the sick, researchers are racing to find the one thing that will protect all of us in the long run: a vaccine.

Big Pharma — long-blasted for gouging prices, avoiding taxes, and rigging the political process to maximize profits — has emerged as key players in the race to bring an end to the COVID-19 crisis. Who gets access to lifesaving medicines and vaccines — and when — will determine who lives and who dies.

Governments around the world — especially wealthier countries home to top pharma companies — have a duty to do everything they possibly can to ensure that any successful medicines or vaccines are made available to all, especially those most in need, now and in the future. Government leadership is central to making COVID-19 vaccines and medicines a global public good. Yet, it’s on pharmaceutical companies to play their part. Many are working to develop these lifesaving innovations and have made some important overtures toward the goal of affordable and fair access to all.

This life-saving work must continue, but we cannot allow Big Pharma to further exacerbate the inequality crisis that COVID-19 has laid bare. This pandemic feeds on inequality, killing the poor and the historically disadvantaged at higher rates than the rich and privileged.

Big Pharma’s “business as usual” model is to make billions off taxpayer-funded research, charge sky-high prices, and funnel profits to wealthy investors. In the midst of a pandemic, that would mean luxury for the few and disaster for the many.

Our response to the virus must break this cycle of inequality. To prevent the COVID pandemic from becoming an inequality pandemic, any medicines or vaccines that pharmaceutical companies develop must be made free to all, and they must be fairly and equitably available to all those people most in need throughout the world.