Examining The COVID-19 Vaccine Prioritization Strategy And Influencing Factors In Africa

BackgroundSince 2019,the world has experienced an unprecedented health disaster or challenge as a result of the outbreak of coronavirus(COVID-19)disease.With the development of the COVID-19 vaccines,there are many issues lurking behind its rollout;some of which are vaccine shortages and hesitancy among people.This has created an impetus in governments across Africa to consider critically how they can protect the citizens with the limited vaccines at their disposal.Central to this is how to appropriately prioritize the use of limited supply of vaccines to priority groups.MethodThe study based on vaccine prioritization policy frameworks including the US Pandemic Severity Assessment Framework,the World Health Organization Sage Prioritization Framework to assess which age-group,health status,residence,occupation,socioeconomic condition,or other factors are most affected by the COVID-19 for vaccine priority.Open access data from OxCGRT(Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker)vaccine policy tracker was used to validate the framework.As a result,prioritization strategies across 49 African countries were retrieved.ResultsThree prioritization were examined;socio-economic(frontline essential occupations)based prioritization,age-stratified prioritization,and medical vulnerability(At-Risk).Essential workers,including law enforcement,frontline non-healthcare workers,transport operators,security guards,airport/Border/Airline Staff,frontline retail workers,factory workers,community services,energy,food and transportation sectors,were prioritized for vaccines to maintain essential services.The obvious reason remains the notion of economic recovery which forced government policy makers to consider groups of people whose work status are highly essential for the African economy.Besides that,older adults,and individuals with underlying health conditions were targeted for vaccine.In some cases,it was combination of the all three or at least two factors.The impact of vaccination was also evaluated based on the epidemiology records and vaccination coverage rates.The study revealed that the vaccination campaign against COVID-19 in Africa has been reversal meaning vaccination strategy has not helped the pandemic to reduce.Rather,cases of infections and deaths have multiplied at the time of this study.Thus,analysis of the prioritization strategies shows limited significant impact on COVID-19 pandemic mitigation.Additionally,an important observation from our study is that countries have begun to distribute the vaccines among all eligible age-groups(after providing for the most vulnerable).There is low adherence to the formerly sequential prioritizing strategy.ConclusionPhased prioritization of vaccines may have the potential to save highly vulnerable groups.However,per this study,the impacts of vaccination on reducing cumulative infections and deaths was found to be contrastive.This limited impact is due to the disturbing’intrinsic’ and ’extrinsic’ challenges particularly,vaccine hesitancies and sporadic transmission of COVID-19 variants.Hence,the vaccination strategy proved ineffective to reduce the cumulative number of fatalities(infections and deaths).As many continents worldwide has vaccinated more than 50%of their population,results from this investigation should aid public health experts and decision makers in Africa to consider other equally important factors while effectively allocating their limited vaccine supplies.