Looking back at the role of Digital Tech in COVID vaccine rollout

As mask mandates end, and vaccine mandates are being relaxed around the world, this is a good time to take stock of how we as a global community did when responding to COVID-19 in terms of vaccine development and rollout.

Response to the pandemic tested on multiple fronts of course, including policy and governance, but let’s focus on the vaccine development and rollout aspects for now.

Developed nations, superior R&D prowess, came to help and accelerate the efforts for the developing nations. We saw shared research, philanthropy, and more. 

There were essentially three main challenges:

1. Developing a vaccine (or vaccines, as it turned out) quickly.
2. Manufacturing at scale
3. Distribution of vaccines and the rollout of vaccination drives

Speed and scale, essentially, were the biggest challenges, as well as the success parameters for the whole initiative.

A vaccine usually takes a decade or more to reach the common people from its research stage. But in the case of the COVID vaccine it was done 10x faster. That’s impressive on its own.

As soon as a few vaccines were approved, most of the developed countries as well as major economies ramped up production of it.

The UK was the first country to begin its vaccination drive on Dec 8,2020 along with the US. Countries in the EU also started their vaccination drive in December. In the beginning they vaccinated the healthcare workers, senior citizens, frontline workers etc, because they were the ones risking their lives day and night for our safety.

India began its vaccination drive in the following month in January.

As you can see in the figure above, These were the major producers of the Covid - 19 vaccine. These countries were the vaccine providers for the rest of the world. They were under immense pressure because they had to vaccinate their own populations too.

Unfortunately, there was a huge disparity in the vaccines provided to these countries. There were some countries that unfortunately lacked the resources as well as the clout to procure the vaccines as quickly as the rest of the world.

Most of these countries were in Africa. 

In some of these countries, there are people yet to receive their first dose even now. 

In some regions, wars and political instability exacerbated the situation further.  . 

From a distribution perspective, many countries adopted a heavily digital roll-out strategy, which certainly helped with logistics, communication regarding availability etc., as well as prioritization and accuracy.   

We saw launch of many self registration apps for vaccination programmes that did the following tasks: 

1. Vaccine Scheduling
2. Vaccine tracking and monitoring
3. Digital vaccine passports
4. Digital communication and outreach 

In this app  the people had to register themselves and book a slot for them to get the vaccine. AI is used to prioritize individuals based on their individual criteria, and put them in a national queue – that is updated in real time, based on the number vaccinated that day, the volume of vaccines available at a state and national level, and is spread out for four months into the future. 

This digital-centric approach also enabled the healthcare providers to track and monitor the distribution of vaccines. By monitoring vaccination rates and identifying areas where coverage is low, officials can target resources to ensure that everyone has access to the vaccine.

It is due to these apps that the vaccines could be administered even in low income countries with effectiveness and efficiency.

So far, about 69.7% of the world population has received at least one dose of a Covid 19 vaccine. 13.31 billion doses have been administered globally and 628,762 are now administered each day. 27.7 % of people in low - income countries have received at least one dose.

Not bad.

Still, the whole pandemic and its management also brought to light the need for a more resilient and effective healthcare ecosystem that is poised to take on similar challenges in the future. To that end, let’s also take a look at a few areas where there was definitely room for improvement.

1. R&D: The R&D to approval journey for new vaccines can take up to 15 years. The fact that the first COVID vaccine was rolled out within 18 months is indeed commendable. An effective R&D would always need access to finance and production capabilities that would require global support and collaboration. The developed nations, for instance, did great in many areas. UK’s support that boosted Covishield vaccine, for instance, is one such example.
2. Supply chain: While the production of vaccines and other medical equipment caught the necessary pace, a major challenge faced was in its distribution. In terms of transportation, appropriate fleet to carry sensitive elements such as oxygen or vaccines under regulated environment, achieving last mile delivery, and so on, it became clear that production alone wouldn’t suffice. Distribution and emergency supply management are key support areas that can render all efforts futile if not focused on.
3. Digital technology adoption: We’ve already witnessed the adoption of digital technology in the last 2 years and the positive impact it has created. Remote health monitoring and teleconsultations that considerably helped dealing with the challenge of staff shortage, was a major relief, to start with. Similarly, access to do-it-yourself digital solutions such as online appointment booking, medical tests scheduling, and more, that saved manual efforts in a highly stressed environment, was remarkable, too. Digital technology has helped bring down healthcare costs through aforesaid solutions. Aside from all this, of course, the specific ways in which digital technologies helped with the rollout of vaccination programs is a huge learning on its own.

The pandemic might be behind us now, but it exposed the fragility in healthcare across the globe. While the developed countries had access to better healthcare facilities as compared to the developing ones, they too, didn’t do well when the challenge was about managing the high demand and scaling to accommodate the entire population. That’s where digital technology helped the early adopters to a great extent. Building a robust, resilient and scalable healthcare ecosystem needs a holistic approach and digital technology definitely forms a key pillar in it.