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. 2022 Nov 17:10:1056670.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.1056670. eCollection 2022.

Developing COVID-19 vaccine recommendations during the pandemic: The experience of Serbia's Expert Committee on Immunization

Ljiljana Markovic-Denic  1 , Dusan Popadic  1 , Tanja Jovanovic  1 , Branka Bonaci-Nikolic  1   2 , Janko Samardzic  1   3 , Vesna Tomic Spiric  1   2 , Miljan Rancic  4 , Siddhartha Sankar Datta  5 , Liudmila Mosina  5 , Jasna Jancic  1   6 , Goran Vukomanovic  7 , Verica Jovanovic  8 , Vladislav Vukomanovic  1   9 , Darko Antic  1 , Marko Veljkovic  8 , Vladan Saponjic  8 , Lisa Jacques-Carroll  5
Affiliations

Developing COVID-19 vaccine recommendations during the pandemic: The experience of Serbia's Expert Committee on Immunization

Ljiljana Markovic-Denic et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

A National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NITAG) is a multi-disciplinary body of national experts that provide evidence-based recommendations to policy-makers to assist them in making informed immunization policy and programme decisions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, NITAGs faced many challenges in making evidence-based recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines due to the rapidly evolving situation with new vaccine products available in a short time period and limited data on vaccine effectiveness. The authors reviewed the process used by Serbia's NITAG, which is called the Serbian Expert Committee on Immunization, to develop COVID-19 vaccine recommendations during the pandemic. The article examines the challenges and successes faced by the committee. Serbia's expert committee used the best available evidence to develop over forty recommendations on all aspects of COVID-19 vaccination. These expert committee recommendations facilitated the early procurement and successful roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines, guidance for vaccination of individuals at the highest risk, and high COVID-19 vaccination coverage in the country. The availability of five COVID-19 vaccines in Serbia was an advantage for the successful roll-out but posed challenges for the expert committee. Serbia's expert committee plans to use the experience and best practices developed during the pandemic to improve and expand its work moving forward.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; COVID-19 vaccination; National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NITAG); Serbia; evidence-based recommendations; immunization.

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Conflict of interest statement

Author MR was employed by WHO Country Office Serbia. Authors SS, LM, and LJ-C were employed by WHO Regional Office for Europe. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
COVID-19 vaccine uptake by week in 2020 and 2021 and timing of adoption of important expert committee recommendations.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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