The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a health crisis of a scale unprecedented in post-war Europe. In response, a large amount of healthcare resources have been redirected to Covid-19 preventive measures, for instance population-wide vaccination campaigns, large-scale SARS-CoV-2 testing, and the large-scale distribution of protective equipment (e.g., N95 respirators) to high-risk groups and hospitals and nursing homes. Despite the importance of these measures in epidemiological and economic terms, health economists and medical ethicists have been relatively silent about the ethical rationales underlying the large-scale allocation of healthcare resources to these measures. The present paper seeks to encourage this debate by demonstrating how the resource allocation to Covid-19 preventive measures can be understood through the paradigm of the Rule of Rescue, without claiming that the Rule of Rescue is the sole rationale of resource allocation in the Covid-19 pandemic.

Covid-19 大流行导致了战后欧洲前所未有的健康危机。作为回应，大量医疗资源已重新用于 Covid-19 预防措施，例如全人群疫苗接种运动、大规模 SARS-CoV-2 测试以及防护设备（例如 N95呼吸器）给高危人群、医院和疗养院。尽管这些措施在流行病学和经济方面很重要，但健康经济学家和医学伦理学家对大规模分配医疗资源给这些措施背后的伦理基本原理保持相对沉默。