A Study on Comparing Different COVID-19 Vaccine Allocation Strategies in the Rohingya Refugee Camps in Bangladesh: A research on the dynamics between vaccine prioritization, COVID-19 infections and economic interactions between refugees and host communities

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, far-reaching measures were introduced to isolate people and reduce the chance of transmission among people. In the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, the camps were locked down for months. As a result, economic dependencies between the refugees and host communities which were built in previous decades were cut-off for months. So far, no research has been published on how to release the burden of limited refugee-host interactions, which can be a vital source of livelihood generation. In this research, the implementation of different vaccine allocation strategies were analysed and compared, to analyse what prioritization strategy can best be introduced to most effectively revive these interactions and control the COVID-19 outbreak. Results show that either prioritizing elderly or high-risk transmission groups can be effective. Prioritizing elderly distinguishes itself as it most effectively reduces severely & critically symptomatic infections. Prioritizing transmission-groups shows maximize refugee-host interactions. When combining both strategies with a dynamic approach of opening/closing the camp from host communities, a more effective strategy is possible for protecting the vital economic functions of an open-system refugee camp. An implication of this research is reflected by the granularity of the model. As the model has a high resolution and is highly computational, insufficient model experiments could be conducted to cover a complete solution space of the model. However, as this research proposes unique study in the dynamics between vaccine allocation and open-system refugee camp, a foundation is grounded for further research.
Engineering and Policy Analysis