Vaccination Strategies in the Midst of an Epidemic

As of the second half of September 2021, most European countries are taking decisions about (i) how forcefully to address vaccine hesitancy, and (ii) which nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to maintain at a time where hospitalisations and deaths have been reduced by vaccination but could pick up with increased societal contacts and worsening weather. On vaccination, availability of vaccines and the logistics of delivery are no longer binding constraints for rich countries for now. The approval of multiple effective covid vaccines in record time represents a big success for our biomedical innovation ecosystem.2 Of course, the fact that, at this point, only 2% of citizens of low-income countries have received at least one vaccine dose is very worrisome and should be addressed at the global level. High-income countries have an overwhelming ethical responsibility, for the common good and also for their self-interest, to decrease the probability of the emergence of new variants against which current vaccines could be ineffective. In this Policy Insight, I discuss in turn the multiple hurdles for vaccination and lessons from the vaccination process so far.
info:eu-repo/semantics/published