Despite notable scientific and medical advances, broader political, socioeconomic and behavioural factors continue to undercut the response to the COVID-19 pandemic1,2. Here we convened, as part of this Delphi study, a diverse, multidisciplinary panel of 386 academic, health, non-governmental organization, government and other experts in COVID-19 response from 112 countries and territories to recommend specific actions to end this persistent global threat to public health. The panel developed a set of 41 consensus statements and 57 recommendations to governments, health systems, industry and other key stakeholders across six domains: communication; health systems; vaccination; prevention; treatment and care; and inequities. In the wake of nearly three years of fragmented global and national responses, it is instructive to note that three of the highest-ranked recommendations call for the adoption of whole-of-society and whole-of-government approaches1, while maintaining proven prevention measures using a vaccines-plus approach2 that employs a range of public health and financial support measures to complement vaccination. Other recommendations with at least 99% combined agreement advise governments and other stakeholders to improve communication, rebuild public trust and engage communities3 in the management of pandemic responses. The findings of the study, which have been further endorsed by 184 organizations globally, include points of unanimous agreement, as well as six recommendations with >5% disagreement, that provide health and social policy actions to address inadequacies in the pandemic response and help to bring this public health threat to an end. 

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A multinational Delphi consensus to end the COVID-19 public health threat

Abstract In the COVID-19 pandemic many countries required COVID certificates, proving vaccination, recovery, or a recent negative test, to access public and private venues. We estimate their effect on vaccine uptake for France, Germany, and Italy using counterfactuals constructed via innovation diffusion theory. The announcement of COVID certificates during summer 2021 were associated – although causality cannot be directly inferred – with increased vaccine uptake in France of 13.0 (95% CI 9.7–14.9) percentage points (p.p.) of the total population until the end of the year, in Germany 6.2 (2.6–6.9) p.p., and in Italy 9.7 (5.4–12.3) p.p. Based on these estimates, an additional 3979 (3453–4298) deaths in France, 1133 (−312–1358) in Germany, and 1331 (502–1794) in Italy were averted; and gross domestic product (GDP) losses of €6.0 (5.9–6.1) billion in France, €1.4 (1.3–1.5) billion in Germany, and €2.1 (2.0–2.2) billion in Italy were prevented. Notably, in France, the application of COVID certificates averted high intensive care unit occupancy levels where prior lockdowns were instated. 

/pdf/the-effect-of-covid-certificates-on-vaccine-uptake-health-3c9240bq.pdf

The effect of COVID certificates on vaccine uptake, health outcomes, and the economy

http://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201971222004726/pdf

Understanding the rebound of influenza in the post COVID-19 pandemic period holds important clues for epidemiology and control

COVID-19 severely impacted world health and, as a consequence of the measures implemented to stop the spread of the virus, also irreversibly damaged the world economy. Research shows that receiving the COVID-19 vaccine is the most successful measure to combat the virus and could also address its indirect consequences. However, vaccine hesitancy is growing worldwide and the WHO names this hesitancy as one of the top ten threats to global health. This study investigates the trend in positive attitudes towards vaccines across ten countries since a positive attitude is important. Furthermore, we investigate those variables related to having a positive attitude, as these factors could potentially increase the uptake of vaccines. We derive our text corpus from vaccine-related tweets, harvested in real-time from Twitter. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP), we derive the sentiment and emotions contained in the tweets to construct daily time-series data. We analyse a panel dataset spanning both the Northern and Southern hemispheres from 1 February 2021 to 31 July 2021. To determine the relationship between several variables and the positive sentiment (attitude) towards vaccines, we run various models, including POLS, Panel Fixed Effects and Instrumental Variables estimations. Our results show that more information about vaccines’ safety and the expected side effects are needed to increase positive attitudes towards vaccines. Additionally, government procurement and the vaccine rollout should improve. Accessibility to the vaccine should be a priority, and a collective effort should be made to increase positive messaging about the vaccine, especially on social media. The results of this study contribute to the understanding of the emotional challenges associated with vaccine uptake and inform policymakers, health workers, and stakeholders who communicate to the public during infectious disease outbreaks. Additionally, the global fight against COVID-19 might be lost if the attitude towards vaccines is not improved.

Positive attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines: A cross-country analysis

The aim of the study was to examine the correlation between COVID‐19 vaccine coverage rates and outcomes of the COVID‐19 epidemic in the case of COVID‐19 variants based on real‐world data. The data came from Our World in Data, which is building the international COVID‐19 vaccination data set and is an open‐source data set for everyone to use. The vaccination data set uses the most recent official numbers from governments and health ministries worldwide. We assessed the correlation between COVID‐19 vaccine coverage rates and outcomes of the COVID‐19 epidemic with existing variants by performing temporal analysis and spatial analysis. Overall, new cases per million population, the reproduction rate of COVID‐19, new deaths from all causes per million population, excess mortality attributed to COVID‐19 pandemic, and hospital patients or intensive care unit (ICU) patients per million population were not decreased with the time course. However, at the same time point, new cases per million population, the reproduction rate of COVID‐19, new deaths per million population, and hospital patients or ICU patients per million population gradually decreased as the rate of vaccination coverage increased. High coverage percentages of COVID‐19 vaccination were negatively correlated with the reproduction rate of COVID‐19 (correlation coefficient −0.116) and ICU patients per million of the local population (correlation coefficient −0.055). Currently, there is no effective treatment for the COVID‐19 pandemic, and prevention of the COVID‐19 pandemic mainly depends on vaccines, especially when the rate of COVID‐19 vaccine coverage is over 60%. The benefits of preventing severe disease and preventing transmission of infection are likely to be obvious.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/jmv.27609

Correlation between vaccine coverage and the COVID‐19 pandemic throughout the world: Based on real‐world data

Elimination versus mitigation of SARS-CoV-2 in the presence of effective vaccines.

During the first five months of 2021, Spain’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign progressed slowly and failed to reach marginalised populations. Here, we discuss how, despite recent improvements, it remains important to further engage key stakeholders to ensure nobody is left behind. Lazarus et al. outline the barriers slowing down the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in Spain. They issue a call to action for all stakeholders to improve access to vaccines, with a particular emphasis on reaching marginalised populations.

/pdf/vaccinate-fast-but-leave-no-one-behind-a-call-to-action-for-g32hdra9wh.pdf

Miquel Oliu-Barton

Papers

Elimination versus mitigation of SARS-CoV-2 in the presence of effective vaccines.

Vaccinate fast but leave no one behind: a call to action for COVID-19 vaccination in Spain