COVID Treatment Quick Start Learning Network Inaugural Meeting: 7 December 2022

COVID-19 has remained a Public Health Emergency of International Concern since January 20, 2020. Over the past two and a half years, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed significant global inequities in access to therapeutics, vaccines, testing, and other medical interventions that could limit the range and impact of the disease. Access to treatment has become an urgent need to tackle alongside persistently low primary vaccination and booster rates in many countries. In addition, scale-up of self-testing for COVID-19 in these settings will enable even more effective approaches.

These imperatives resounded throughout our Inaugural Learning Network Meeting on 7 December 2022. Diverse speakers and participants from around the world collectively acknowledged the necessity of mechanisms to complement continued access to vaccines for long-term COVID management. Presenters shared their key lessons learned at both the country and regional levels.

In the first session, panelists Dr. Edson Rwagasore, Division Manager of Rwanda’s Biomedical Center’s Surveillance Division, and Professor Lloyd B. Mulenga, Director of Infectious Diseases for the Zambia Ministry of Health, discussed the preparation Rwanda and Zambia is undergoing for the introduction of oral antiviral test-and-treat programs.

Dr. Cameron Wolfe, Research Lead for the COVID Treatment Quick Start Consortium and Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University, and Dr. Tajudeen “Taj” Raji, Head of the Public Health Institutes and Research at the Africa CDC, led the second half of the meeting discussing initial lessons learned on clinical protocol development for defining high-risk populations.