In the first waves of the pandemic, concrete steps were outlined to help governments and MOH to harness the private sector. Those can be applied to current COVID-19 needs such as vaccines roll out. Go back to basics with the PSE Action Plan which describes how to: get organized to work together, secure private sector assets to increase surge capacity, mobilize public and private health staff, ensure all health facilities and staff have the supplies they need to respond to the crisis, and establish systems to integrate the public and private sector response effort.
Options were proposed to governments to assist with the "containment phase" - ranging from treating COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients to leveraging mobile technology to the use of private resources to create a social safety net (shelters for homeless, etc.) These options can be used to inform discussion between public and private sectors in health and definition of respective roles, even at this stage in the pandemic.
sCOVID19 testing, treatment and supplies are three areas of focus which continue to be relevant today. Early on, best practices were collected on how to plan, acquire space, staff, and stuff by seamlessly integrating the private sector within the government response systems early on. These series of documents outline practical advice and illustrative examples of engagement with the private sector in early COVID-19 responses.
While it is important to learn lessons from other geographies, lessons learned from the past are equally worthy of recognition. In July 2020, case studies from Kenya’s and Rwanda’s experience with early engagement of the private sector in the COVID-19 response were produced and offers insight which are still relevant in this stage of the pandemic
