Covid-19 vaccination management: decentralised/centralised and digitally optimised

Abstract

'The end of the pandemic is not the vaccines, but the vaccination' (Dai & Song, 2021, p. 455). The organisational implementation of vaccination is essentially a general economic (management) problem, as the resources for mass vaccination are limited, i.e. not only the supply of vaccines, but also the capacities of medical facilities and health personnel. Policy makers need to select and decide an optimal organisational strategy under these constraints to maximise the overall impact of mass vaccination (Kitagawa and Wang, 2021). This study focuses on the first phase of vaccination implementation, which refers to the 'willing vaccinees' who accounted for 50-70% of the population for Covid-19 vaccines in most industrialised countries (Mahase, 2021). Most countries reached 50% of full vaccination in July 2021, i.e. about half a year after the start of vaccination: Spain 58%, United Kingdom [UK] 57%, Netherlands 54%, Italy 52%, Germany 52%, USA 52%, Switzerland 51% and France 50%, with the exception of Poland 46% and Sweden 40%. We therefore define the first phase as the first half of 2021.