COVID-19 vaccination campaign trends and challenges in select Asian countries

ABSTRACT How successful have countries in Asia been at vaccinating their populations against COVID-19? What explains the broadly similar pace of rollout across countries in the region despite diverse governance capacities, demographic compositions, resources and economies? This paper presents a comparative analysis of the planning and implementation of national vaccination drives against COVID-19 across 21 South and East Asian countries. We advance an analytical framework to understand the different challenges countries encounter and distinguish three key factors on both the national and international level—vaccine shortages, governance capacity for mass vaccination and vaccine hesitancy. We apply the analytical framework to national vaccination drives, offering a snapshot of countries’ vaccination progress as of early 2021, and conclude with general trends for the COVID-19 vaccine rollout across the region.