JAKARTA, October 27 2021 – With the impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic threatening human health and social security across the region, there is a need for ASEAN as a regional body to coordinate the responses of Member States to contain the spread of the virus and to scale-up collective action from all relevant stakeholders.

To this end, the ASEAN Health Sector and ASEAN Secretariat, in cooperation with the German government through Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), is organizing the “2^nd ASEAN Webinar Series with Expert Panel on COVID-19 Response” with Edelman Public Relations Worldwide as the Implementing Agency. The series will start on Wednesday, 3 November and ends on Thursday, 9 December.

The webinar aims to consolidate and share knowledge, information, experiences, and other salient updates that will generate a set of evidence-based recommendations for consideration by the various economic sectors in ASEAN, as well as its governments.

“Among the major challenges for ASEAN in responding to COVID-19 is the data and information gaps identified within the region. As such, the second edition of our webinar series will continue to serve as a synchronized platform to facilitate exchanges of information, research, and sharing of best practices towards regional recovery and resilience,” said Ekkaphab Phanthavong, Deputy Secretary-General of ASEAN for ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community.

The first webinar in the series, “ASEAN Vaccine Talk: Towards Vaccine Security & Self-Reliance for All”, will take place on Wednesday, 3 November from 02:00 – 04:30 pm (GMT+7). At the webinar, a panel of global experts will provide updates on new SARS CoV-2 mutations, their impact on the development of vaccines, and best practices for building more resilient vaccine supply chains to ensure the region’s self-reliance beyond COVID-19.

Resource speakers for the first webinar in the series include: Professor Ken Ishii, Professor of Vaccine Science at The University of Tokyo; Dr. Nguyen Thu Anh, Managing Director at Woolcock Institute of Medical Research in Vietnam; and Richard Maude, Executive Director of Asia Society Policy Institute in Australia.  

A total of five thematic webinars will be conducted with key experts from within and outside the ASEAN region. The presentation and sharing of the key expert or resource persons will be the basis of the discussion and exchange of views among various representatives from ASEAN sectors and general webinar participants. Following the conclusion of each webinar in the series, key messages and recommendations gathered from these discussions will be documented into policy-briefs to be shared with the relevant ASEAN sectors. The documentation and dissemination of these policy briefs will support ongoing and future regional initiatives on COVID-19 response, recovery, and resilience.

Registrations for the first webinar in the series, “ASEAN Vaccine Talk: Towards Vaccine Security and Self-Reliance for All” is now open at aws2021-1.rsvpify.com and will close on 2 November. More information about the upcoming webinars in the series will be announced in due course and made available at ASEAN’s official Facebook page.  

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For any media inquiries, please contact Health Division at health@asean.org.

For more details on the webinars: