Asia revs up jabs after slow start
Several countries now on track to surpass the US in fully vaccinating their people.
As the United States and Europe ramped up their Covid-19 vaccination programmes, the Asia-Pacific region, once lauded for its pandemic response, struggled to get them off the ground. Now, many of those laggards are speeding ahead, lifting hopes of a return to normality in nations resigned to repeated lockdowns and onerous restrictions.
The turnabout is as much a testament to the region’s success in securing supplies and working out the kinks in their programmes as it is to vaccine hesitancy and political opposition in the United States.
South Korea, Japan and Malaysia have even pulled ahead of the US in the number of vaccine doses administered per 100 people — a pace that seemed unthinkable in the spring. Several have surpassed the United States in fully vaccinating their populations or are on track to do so, limiting the perniciousness of the Delta variant of the coronavirus.
In South Korea, the authorities said vaccines had helped keep most people out of the hospital. About 0.6% of fully vaccinated people who contracted Covid had severe illness and about 0.1% died, according to data collected by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency from May to August.
In Japan, serious cases have fallen by half over the last month, to a little over 1,000 a day. Hospitalisations have plummeted from a high of just over 230,000 in late August to around 28,074 on Thursday.
“It’s almost like the tortoise and the hare,” said Jerome Kim, director general of the International Vaccine Institute, a non-profit organisation based in Seoul and focused on vaccine research
for the developing world. “Asia was always going to use vaccines when they became available.”
In contrast with the United States, vaccines were never a polarising issue in Asia-Pacific.
Although each country has had to contend with its own anti-vaccine movements, they have been relatively small. They have never benefited
from an ecosystem — sympathetic media, advocacy groups and politicians — that has allowed misinformation to influence the populace.
Overall, most Asians have trusted their governments to do the right thing, and they were willing to put the needs of the community over their individual freedoms.
Reuben Ng, an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy who has studied vaccine hesitancy globally for the past decade, said that pre-Covid, the discussion around immunisation had always been mixed in Asia because of some scepticism about the safety. But Mr Ng and his team, who have been analysing media reports, have found that the region now holds mostly positive views on vaccines.
People in poorer nations whose lives were upended by extended lockdowns felt they had no choice but to get vaccinated. Indonesia and the Philippines are home to thousands of daily-wage workers who cannot rely on unemployment benefits to survive.
Arisman, 35, a motorcycle taxi driver in Jakarta, Indonesia, said he got his second shot of the Chinese-made Sinovac vaccine in July because his job involved contact with many people.
“If I get sick, I don’t get money,” said Arisman, who like many Indonesians goes by one name. “If I don’t work, I don’t get money.”
The lack of social safety nets in many Asian countries motivated many governments to roll out the vaccines quickly, said Tikki Pangestu, a co-chair of the Asia-Pacific Immunization Coalition, a group that assesses Covid-19 vaccine preparedness. “At the end of the day, if they don’t do it, they’re going to end up with social unrest, which is the last thing they want,” he added.
When the Delta outbreak emerged, fewer than 25% of Australians over age 16 had received a single shot. In the state of New South Wales, which includes Sydney, 86% of the adult population has now received a first dose, and 62% of adults are fully vaccinated. The country expects to fully inoculate 80% of its population over 16 by early November.
“There was great community leadership — there were people from across the political divide who came out to support vaccination,” said Greg Dore, an infectious-disease expert at the University of New South Wales. “It really helped us turn around a level of hesitancy that was there.”
Many governments have used incentives to encourage inoculations.
In South Korea, the authorities eased restrictions in August on private gatherings for fully vaccinated people, allowing them to meet in larger groups while maintaining stricter curbs for others. Singapore, which has fully vaccinated 82% of its population, previously announced similar measures.
Researchers there have also analysed the pockets of people who refuse to be inoculated and are trying to persuade them.
Mr Ng from the National University of Singapore and his team recently found out that a group of seniors who lived alone were worried about possible adverse effects from the vaccine, fearing they could die in solitude. The volunteers promised they would visit after the vaccinations, a strategy that worked.
“This targeted approach does make a difference, because at the end of the day, the mass communications campaign can only take you so far,” Mr Ng said.
The lack of social safety nets in Asia motivated many governments to roll out vaccines quickly. ASIA-PACIFIC IMMUNIZATION COALITION CO-CHAIR,
TIKKI PANGESTU