Vaccination Worldwide: Strategies, Distribution and Challenges VACCINATION WORLDWIDE:STRATEGIES,DISTRIBU- TION AND CHALLENGES Chirag Samal1, Kasia Jakimowicz1,2, Krishnendu Dasgupta1, Aniket Vashishtha1, Francisco O.1, 3, Arunakiry Natarajan1, Haris Nazir1, Alluri Siddhartha Varma1, Tejal Dahake1, Amitesh Anand Pandey1, Ishaan Singh1, John Sangyeob Kim1, Mehrab Singh Gill1, Saurish Srivastava1, Orna Mukhopadhyay1, Parth Patwa1,Qamil Mirza1, Sualeha Irshad1, Sheshank Shankar1,2, Rohan Iyer1, Rohan Sukumaran1, Ashley Mehra1, Anshuman Sharma1, Abhishek Singh2, Maurizio Arseni1, Sethuraman T V1, Saras Agrawal1, Vivek Sharma1,2,3, Ramesh Raskar1,2 1 PathCheck Foundation, 02139 Cambridge, USA. 2 MIT Media Lab, 02139 Cambridge, USA. 3 Harvard Medical School, USA.
[email protected] ABSTRACT The Coronavirus 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus represents an unprecedented crisis for our planet. It is a bane of the uber¨ con- nected world that we live in that this virus has affected almost all countries and caused mortality and economic upheaval at a scale whose effects are going to be felt for generations to come. While we can all be buoyed at the pace at which vac- cines have been developed and brought to market, there are still challenges ahead for all countries to get their populations vaccinated equitably and effectively. This paper provides an overview of ongoing immunization efforts in various countries. In this early draft, we have identified a few key factors that we use to review dif- ferent countries’ current COVID-19 immunization strategies and their strengths and draw conclusions so that policymakers worldwide can learn from them. Our paper focuses on processes related to vaccine approval, allocation and prioritiza- tion, distribution strategies, population to vaccine ratio, vaccination governance, accessibility and use of digital solutions, and government policies.