US President-elect Joe Biden says vaccines won’t be made mandatory in his country
Geneva: While evidence on promoting vaccination in general is useful in the context of the current pandemic, the acceptance and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines present an unprecedented challenge, a World Health Organisation report, released today, has stated.
The report, “Behavioural Considerations for Acceptance and Uptake of COVID-19 Vaccines”, published by the WHO Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health, stated that in addition to the sheer magnitude of the coming vaccination effort, “the vaccines will be new and are likely to be only partially effective for a yet unknown period of time”.
The release of the report coincides with the approval of Pfizer vaccine by the United Kingdom, the first country to do so; and the US President-elect Joe Biden’s comments that inoculations would not be mandatory in his country, even as he, along with former US Presidents Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama expressed their willingness to be inoculated publicly to allay the potential concerns about its safety.
THe report further noted that there may be so-called adverse events rightly or incorrectly attributed to the new vaccines, and countries will set different safety thresholds before offering the vaccines to their populations.
“Evidence suggests that strategies which aim to change people’s thoughts and feelings towards vaccination have not always been successful in increasing uptake. It is therefore important to focus on building trust in COVID-19 vaccines before people form an opinion against them,” the report recommends.
The reports further states that while the behavioural goal is uptake of COVID-19 vaccine by the general population, achieving that goal will depend on the behaviours of other “actors” in the system – those offering the vaccination, those planning how and where to offer the vaccination, and those tasked with maximising uptake using strategies such as persuasion and the use of trusted endorsers (or “validators”).
“To achieve high and equitable vaccine uptake, the use of existing scientific knowledge is essential, as is acquisition of new information, and learning in real time about what works and what does not. Learning can be increased by engaging with target populations in local communities to listen and respond to their perspectives, concerns and expectations in relation to vaccination,” it stated. According to the report, these efforts can play a role in building the trust of the community in health systems, and in informing the design and delivery of policies and services that are responsive and respectful to local needs.
“Behavioural research identifies three categories of drivers of vaccine uptake, in addition to people having the necessary knowledge: 1) an enabling environment; 2) social influences; and 3) motivation,” it pointed out, adding that the three drivers interact and overlap, depending on contexts. “However, for the purpose of understanding the problem and identifying strategies, it is helpful to keep the categories separate. An appreciation of each driver leads to its own set of insights and interventions, or mix of interventions, which will often vary across communities,” it said.
The report concluded that vaccine acceptance and uptake could be increased by:
- Creating an enabling environment – making vaccination easy, quick and affordable, in all relevant respects.
- Harnessing social influences – especially from people who are particularly trusted by and identified with members of relevant communities.
- Increasing motivation – through open and transparent dialogue and communication about uncertainty and risks, including around the safety and benefits of vaccination.
- In recent years, there has been a great deal of research on vaccination uptake and its behavioural drivers. While the evidence is still evolving, these efforts have resulted in a better understanding of the barriers and enablers to vaccination – especially, but not only, for child vaccination.
- Research efforts have also generated potentially effective strategies to improve vaccine acceptance and uptake, which go beyond traditional information campaigns aspiring to change behaviours by improving knowledge. Information on its own has shown a limited impact on facilitating vaccination uptake.
Meanwhile, the WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told media persons here today that he was “pleased to see that the United Kingdom’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency gave an emergency authorisation for the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for rollout”. He hailed the decision an “important scientific step for the world as vaccines will be critical in the battle against COVID-19”.
He said that progress on vaccines “gives us all a lift and we can now start to see the light at the end of the tunnel”, but said that the WHO was concerned that “there is a growing perception that the pandemic is over”.
“The truth is that at present, many places are witnessing very high transmission of the virus, which is putting enormous pressure on hospitals, intensive care units and health workers,” he said.
With vaccines now being introduced, it’s really important that they are distributed equitably around the world and informed about a new hundred-hundred initiative – “a major sprint by WHO, UNICEF, World Bank, Global Fund and Gavi”, which he said aimed to help 100 countries conduct rapid readiness assessments and country-specific plans within 100 days for vaccines and other COVID-19 tools.
“First we’re asking all countries to do a country readiness assessment that takes into account cold chain, health worker capacity, micro-planning, initial target populations and training. This will form the basis of national deployment and vaccination plans, which will outline how to rollout the COVID-19 vaccines and identify any potential bottlenecks that will need to be planned for.For decision makers, this means passing any legislation and policies needed to expedite the process, ensuring the regulatory process is fit for purpose and confirming that the financing is in place,” he said.
– globalbihari bureau
