Combating Covid

The battle against the Covid-19 virus is continuing across the country. Pakistan has shown a distinct decline in its positivity rate, which has fallen to 4.42 percent. But there is still a way to go. While Pakistan now has a considerable stock of vaccine in the country, with over 100,000 doses of Pfizer biotech vaccine arriving in the country under the Covax programme on Friday, the question is whether it can persuade enough people to have themselves vaccinated. So far, most of those who have stepped forward are those who see themselves with risk or who have witnessed at close range people in their homes or communities dying from what is a painful and frightening disease to watch once it truly takes hold of the patient, or those who have refused to give in to the plethora of conspiracy theory regarding vaccination. The second dose take-up has however been better than in many other countries, with about 80 percent of those who seek the first dose going in for their second dose. There are however, some reports from independent sources that the number of people going in for the vaccine is falling due to stories in the media about possible death after receiving the vaccine, or about the risks of some of the vaccines, although some of this is blatantly fake news. These rumours and conjectures have to be explained to the people in a simple manner so that they know the truth.

At the same time, Pakistan must also combat, as the rest of the world is doing, the new variants being reported in the country. The South African variant is said to have already entered Pakistan's borders and has, among others, affected children aged under two years of age. Health experts suggest that the families of these children and other families get adult members vaccinated as quickly as possible so that the children are spared the disease and also so that it cannot spread from young children to others. This again needs to be explained in clearer terms to people. The first case of the Indian variant has been detected in Sindh and we need to keep a check on how quickly this will spread and what can be done to stop this fast-moving variant in its tracks. Pakistan is taking measures to keep the Covid-19 virus out of the country with sniffer dogs put on duty at the Peshawar airport to sniff passengers coming in.

These are all encouraging measures and need to be taken forward. But we must step up the pace of vaccination. Currently about 245,000 people are being vaccinated across the country each day. Dr Faisal Sultan, the prime minister's special assistant on health, has suggested that this number needs to go up to around 500,000 if we are to save ourselves from the Covid-19 pandemic and prevent it from spreading more widely in the country. He has also mentioned the possibility of reaching out to large private employers, such as industrialists, factory owners, and those running private firms to persuade them to vaccinate their employees so that more people can be vaccinated more quickly, and the herd immunity we so badly require created within our borders.