Webinar: The Equity of Vaccination in Asia

Webinar: The Equity of Vaccination in Asia

Webinar: The Equity of Vaccination in Asia

June 17th, 2021 at 1:00 – 3:45 pm GMT+7

Find the recording and presentation material in: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YgCM4Tx3vEDtRfvSmOli44RiBBSH8zja?usp=sharing

 

Coronavirus pandemic has been affected more than 136 million people and caused at least 3,8 million deaths worldwide until 18 June 2021. This pandemic existed for more than a year, but the cases are still increasing in all regions over the world2. Asia is one of the regions with a high percentage of daily confirmed COVID-19 cases. Around 43% of daily confirmed cases come from Asia2. Facing that problem, to control the circumstances and to help prevent further illness and death, the speeding up of vaccination program is one of the critical ways needed. Especially in Asia, vaccination delay might be a problem when the cases trend still increasing globally8. Therefore, it is required 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 Connecting Organization for Regional Disease Surveillance (CORDS), Ending Pandemic, and Indonesia One Health University Network (INDOHUN), held a Webinar on The Equity of Vaccination in Asia. The event is designed to discuss the best practices and opportunities to improve the COVID-19 vaccination in the countries. The objective of this event is: to describe current practice, plan, and scheme of COVID-19 vaccination from COVAX, especially in South East Asia; to describe current practices and challenges of COVID-19 vaccination in key study countries; to analyze the gap of needs and opportunities for improvement of the COVID-19 vaccination in key study countries, and to generate discussion among participants and speakers on best practices and challenges of COVID-19 vaccination in South East Asia.


Figure 1. Webinar: The Equity of Vaccination in Asia

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APEIR successfully conducted the Webinar on 17 June 2021, which 97 participants attended. The Webinar participants were from various institutions and backgrounds, including university, government, and private. They are from Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, Israel, Albania, Netherlands, Tanzania, and the United States. The speakers and experts involved were Dr. Asik Surya, M.P.P.M from Ministry of Health Indonesia; Prof Daniel Cohen from Middle East Consortium for Infectious Diseases Surveillance (MECIDS); Dr. Arturo Pesigan from World Health Organization; and Dr. Kaja Abbas from London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. The discussion led by Prof. dr. Agus Suwandono, MPH, Dr. PH, a professor in epidemiology from School of the Public Health University of Diponegoro and Indonesia One Health University Network.


Figure 2. Speakers, Panelists, Moderator, and Organizing Committee

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Dr. Asik shared the Government of Indonesia's effort to speed up COVID-19 vaccination across the country. It includes regulations, roadmap, human resources, administration, logistics, a network of health facilities, and a monitoring and evaluation system of the COVID-19 vaccination. Professor Cohen also shared the outstanding country effort in Israel in circulating and monitoring, and evaluating the COVID-19 vaccination program. The research shared by Professor Cohen showed that two doses of BNT162b2 were highly effective in preventing laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths. Currently, they are continuing evaluation of the performance of the vaccines in "real life," including assessment of indirect protection and duration of protection as well as continuing evaluation of protection against the new variants B.1.351 ”South  African” and P.1 “Brazilian” or others (if they will emerge in Israel). In the second session of the Webinar, there were presentations from Dr. Pesigan regarding The Equity of Vaccination in South-East Asia and Dr. Abbas regarding the Health, Economic & Equity Impact of Immunisation: Pre and Post COVID-19 - Vaccine Era.


Figure 3. Indonesia presentation

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Figure 4. Israel presentation

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Figure 5. WHO presentation

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Figure 6. LSHTM presentation

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The Webinar comes with the conclusion such as:

  • The country and the world faces challenges in the equity of the COVID-19 vaccination program.
  • The country's vaccination program's success needs support from regulations, availability of human resources, robust administration procedure, logistics, a network of health facilities, and an intense monitoring and evaluation system.
  • It also will need strong collaboration and coordination among stakeholders from national to a local level, including but not limited to Ministry of Health, Ministry of Finance, Local Government, Health Facility, Health Workers, Laboratory Officer, Army, Public Health, Epidemiologist, etc.
  • It is essential to develop a strategy and method to distribute and provide vaccination to communities across the country. For instance, collaboration with a public and private hospital, empowering primary health care, conducting drive-thru, etc. It will be one of the keys to the success of the vaccination program.
  • The intense monitoring and evaluation of the program will also be needed to ensure the effectiveness of the vaccination program. Especially how vaccination impact health and the economy. And how to improve it in the future.
  • The pandemic cannot be solved without country effort on Genomic Surveillance and investigation; Surveillance, testing and contact tracing, Public health and social measures, and Health care system readiness.
  • The innovative research on the effectiveness of current available COVID-19 vaccines and the COVID-19 new variant still needed to face the challenging rise across the world.
  • To end this pandemic and prevent new variants from undermining progress, it needs to vaccinate the world quickly and equitably.

 

We agreed that there is no one is safe unless everyone is safe.