Making global disparities visible: what cartograms reveal about COVID-19 protection and burden

Global disparities in COVID-19 vaccination and health outcomes underscore substantial inequalities in protection and disease burden. Using World Health Organization (WHO) data, this study employs continuous area cartograms to visualise cross-national differences in vaccination coverage, infection rates, mortality rates and case fatality rates. Countries with limited vaccine access – particularly in Africa – faced disproportionately severe outcomes, not because infection levels were higher but due to systemic vulnerabilities in healthcare capacity, surveillance infrastructure and reporting systems. By rescaling national boundaries according to epidemiological burden rather than territorial area, the cartograms expose inequalities that conventional choropleth maps often obscure. This study demonstrates how alternative geovisualisation techniques can challenge intuitive readings of global health statistics and sharpen geographical understanding of uneven protection and unequal burdens during the COVID-19 pandemic.