Trust, capacity and management of vaccine rollouts

This chapter focuses on the trust and capacity-related challenges faced by governments in managing COVID-19 vaccine rollouts, and utilises Brenton et al.’s policy capacity framework to undertake close analysis of the Australian case. The analysis suggests that three main forms of capacity are critical for successful mass vaccination. First, the capacity of public agencies to mobilise data and resources to understand unvaccinated citizens and design effective interventions to drive uptake. Second, the capacity of political leaders to appropriately frame risk, blame and urgency, especially in the face of attempts by both fringe and mainstream politicians to undermine vaccine rollouts for their own political ends. Third, the capacity of the state to negotiate conflicting demands of citizens - ranging from the ability to opt-out, to requests for more time or information, to demands that vaccine refusers face financial or other penalties - without further undermining trust.