Vaccine rollout

Pakistan has moved a few steps closer to dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic that it seemed had been almost forgotten. The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan on Friday approved the Convidecia vaccine manufactured by CanSinoBio in China. This is a positive step as the vaccine underwent trials at five centres in Pakistan and as per universal protocol should be more easily available to people in the country, as doses are handed out. In addition, it is a vaccine which requires only one shot as compared to two which are the standard requirement for most of the other vaccines in the market so far. In Pakistan, these include China’s Sinopharm vaccine, the Sputnik-5 vaccine developed by Russia, the AstraZeneca vaccine from Oxford University and a Swedish firm. And now the latest vaccine from China. It is far from certain yet how many vaccines Pakistan will be able to put together to vaccinate its enormous population. But even more significant than this is the question of how many people will allow themselves to be vaccinated. So far rollout has been slow, because of administrative difficulties reported by doctors and other medical professionals. Medical professionals have reported that in some cases they received a message from the government helpline saying that vaccination had not begun and there were problems with their identity card numbers or other documents.

In addition, we have the issue of certain influential persons able to jump the queue and get vaccinated. The vaccine till now is available only to frontline medical workers. And from here on will be permitted to persons older than 65. There has also been an element of confusion regarding age and whether those above 60 would be vaccinated. This seems to stem from concern in some countries over the efficacy of the Sinopharm vaccine for this age group. However, since then the age issue seems to have been resolved – though we are not clear on the details. And in the same kind of confusion, the government which had earlier said prices for the vaccine in the private sector would be regulated has now said that there would be no regulation and companies would themselves determine the price of the vaccine. There is also some element of a lack of uniformity in what key officials are saying with some health officials even – irresponsibly – saying that people should take the vaccine at their own risk, and that the vaccine could even lead to death. This is obviously not encouraging. And we need to promote the idea that vaccination, apart from a small number of exceptions which are unavoidable, is essentially safe and people need to get themselves vaccinated.

This can only happen if a uniform government campaign is run and senior medical professionals persuaded to get the vaccine in public as we have seen happen in other countries. We also need to make the vaccine available and let people know precisely how many doses are currently available in the country and how many more are expected. Around 1.1 million vials of the Sinopharm vaccine are understood to have been delivered by China. But more information is needed in the public sphere so that the vaccine rollout can begin in earnest and the pandemic is brought under some control at least.