My poorly informed and very uncertain hot take is the WHO cautious estimates on roll-out might be as much about logistics and capacity than it is about caution or laziness. I find it hard to believe with pressure from the vaccine inventors and others, that the WHO won’t pre-qualify the thing very soon.
The kind of somewhat tricky logistics I’m talking about might be that 1. This vaccine has a slightly unusual 4 dose schedule which will need integration into standard country vaccination schefules.
2. A whole lot of money will have to be freed up for the actual rollout. Donors fund logistics of the rollouts too, not just the doses. This money might simply not be available right now.
3. Rollouts will need to be set up in a way that real-life efficacy can be followed up, so before vaccination gets started there will have to be a plan as to how to measure before and after prevalence/incidence/severe malaria etc which will not be easy in many places
4. There are also RTS,S rollouts to take into account which will complicate matters in some countries.
This isn’t quite as simple as just getting doses of covid vaccines on the ground and jabbing as many people as possible.
From your financial times article
“Harris said the timeline was a “conservative estimate” based on “the many moving parts and work of partners required to make this happen”, including for pre-qualification, a separate, confidential, WHO-led process that she said was “well on the way” to completion.
“We are working — and have been well before this announcement — to do our utmost to get this vaccine to children much earlier . . . ideally well before the timeline” announced on Monday, she said, adding that “safety, quality and trust” must not be compromised in the rollout.”
If this really the case I’m not sure how much advocating to WHO would really help at the moment. I like your idea of understanding GAVI and country processes here.
Nice initiative I completely aggree
My poorly informed and very uncertain hot take is the WHO cautious estimates on roll-out might be as much about logistics and capacity than it is about caution or laziness. I find it hard to believe with pressure from the vaccine inventors and others, that the WHO won’t pre-qualify the thing very soon.
The kind of somewhat tricky logistics I’m talking about might be that
1. This vaccine has a slightly unusual 4 dose schedule which will need integration into standard country vaccination schefules.
2. A whole lot of money will have to be freed up for the actual rollout. Donors fund logistics of the rollouts too, not just the doses. This money might simply not be available right now.
3. Rollouts will need to be set up in a way that real-life efficacy can be followed up, so before vaccination gets started there will have to be a plan as to how to measure before and after prevalence/incidence/severe malaria etc which will not be easy in many places
4. There are also RTS,S rollouts to take into account which will complicate matters in some countries.
This isn’t quite as simple as just getting doses of covid vaccines on the ground and jabbing as many people as possible.
From your financial times article
“Harris said the timeline was a “conservative estimate” based on “the many moving parts and work of partners required to make this happen”, including for pre-qualification, a separate, confidential, WHO-led process that she said was “well on the way” to completion.
“We are working — and have been well before this announcement — to do our utmost to get this vaccine to children much earlier . . . ideally well before the timeline” announced on Monday, she said, adding that “safety, quality and trust” must not be compromised in the rollout.”
If this really the case I’m not sure how much advocating to WHO would really help at the moment. I like your idea of understanding GAVI and country processes here.