As in previous versions, the primary emphasis of the Roadmap is to guide country-level vaccination. However, the Roadmap needed to reflect the persisting profound global inequities in vaccine access and coverage.
SAGE issued a Roadmap for Prioritized Use of Vaccines in October of 2020. This roadmap has guided countries in the prioritization of vaccine use under the situation of constrained supply. SAGE has now provided a substantial revision of this document. The Roadmap for Prioritized Use of COVID-19 Vaccines aims to guide countries in the decision-making to address their specific context, taking into account increasing vaccine availability, current vaccine coverage, and ever-changing epidemiology, which includes the circulation of variants of concern. The recommendations in the roadmap are grounded in supporting equitable vaccine access and coverage, since this remains critical to ending the acute phase of the pandemic.
While the previous version of the Roadmap was developed in the context of vaccine supply constrains, this updated version pivots to optimization of vaccine use as the supply for countries is easing. For this reason, the Roadmap not only draws from comprehensive evidence reviews, but its development involved an intense consultation process through which all six WHO regions were solicited for comments.
The Roadmap now includes the prioritization of vaccine doses beyond 50% population coverage and includes consideration of vaccine use in children and adolescents, as well as prioritization of additional and booster doses. Given increasing vaccine availability, the document expands further in lower priority use groups than the previous version.
The revised Roadmap is available here.
- SAGE
