Webinar: The Equity of Vaccination in Asia Save the date June 17th, at 1:00 – 3:30 pm GMT + 7

Category: Apeir Events
Published: Monday, 14 June 2021 15:29

Registration Link:

http://bit.ly/APEIRWebinar_vaccination

Objectives:

  1. To describe current practice, plan, and scheme of COVID-19 vaccination from COVAX especially in South East Asia.
  2. To describe current practices and challenges of COVID-19 vaccination in key study countries
  3. To analyze the gap of needs and opportunities for improvement of the COVID-19 vaccination in key study countries 
  4. To generate discussion among participants and speakers on best practices and challenges of COVID-19 vaccination in South East Asia

 

Background

Coronavirus pandemic has been affected more than 136 million people and caused of more than 2.9 million deaths in the world1. This pandemic alredy existed for more than a year, but the cases still increasing in all regions over the world2. Until 10th April 2021, Asia is the region with the highest percentage of daily confirmed COVID-19 cases. Around 43% of daily confirmed cases are come from Asia2. With the highest daily case, the total COVID-19 test in Asia is not as many as the daily confirmed cases there. Only India which performed more than 100 million tests in Asia, the other countries varied from 100,000 to 10 million total tests3. Therefore, vaccine is one of the critical ways which needed by Asia to control the cases, and to help prevent further illness and death.

COVID-19 vaccine development has been expedited since the early 2020 and several vaccines have been authorized and used since the late 2020. To achieve equitable access of COVID-19 vaccines over the world, WHO, CEPI, and Gavi has launched the vaccine pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator named as The COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX). COVAX aims to end acute phase of COVID-19 pandemic by: 1) speeding up the development of safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19; 2) supporting the building of manufacturing capabilities; 3) and working with governments and manufacturers to ensure fair and equitable allocation of the vaccines for all countries – the only global initiative to do so4,5.  Even if some efforts to achieve equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines has been established, there were some reports of vaccine rollout delay in some regions, including Asia.

From the Economist Intelligence Unit estimation, Asia and Africa will be region which will be fully covered by COVID-19 vaccines at the latest6. It estimated Asia will be fully covered from late 2020 to early 2023. Several reasons lie for the vaccination delay in Asia such as limited vaccine manufacturing capabilities, logistical challenges, and regulatory delays7. The vaccination delay in Asia might be a problem when the cases trend still increasing globally8. The number of cases in Asia have been decreasing at early 2021 but it start increasing since March 20218. Therefore, it is needed to analyze the vaccination progress in Asia.

Realizing the importance of collaboration, coordination, and communication in aiming the equity of vaccination, The Asia Partnership on Emerging Infectious Disease Research (APEIR) in collaboration with the Ending Pandemics, and Connecting Organization for Regional Disease Surveillance (CORDS), will hold a Webinar on The Equity of Vaccination in Asia. The event is designed to discuss the best practices and the opportunities for improvement of the COVID-19 vaccination in the countries. The webinar will be attended by APEIR and CORDS network countries. There will be presentations of vaccination case study from Cambodia and the Ending Pandemic network country.  

 

Reference:

  1. COVID-19 Dashboard by the CSSE last update 4/13/2021. Coronavirus Resource Center: John Hopkins University. [internet] available from: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
  2. Our World in Data. Daily confirmed COVID-19 cases last update 4/12/2021. [internet] available from: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-cases-covid-region
  3. Our World in Data. Test conducted per new confirmed case of COVID-19 4/11/2021. [internet] available from: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/tests-per-confirmed-case-daily-smoothed?region=Asia
  4. https://www.who.int/initiatives/act-accelerator/covax
  5. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/covid-19-vaccines
  6. BBC News. What’s causing vaccine delays in some Asian countries?. [online] available from: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56150755
  7. Channel News Asia. Commentary: Why is Asia Slow to get vaccinated?. [online] available from: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56150755
  8. WHO Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard: Daily Situation by WHO Region last update 4/13/2021. [online] available from: https://covid19.who.int/