MKRMS webinar: Preventive measures must continue to contain virus, say speakers

LAHORE : Last 18 months have been turbulent owing to huge economic and healthcare challenges caused by COVID-19. These challenges were met with strong policies and strategies. Preventive measures and COVID-19 SOPS were taken to contain the virus.

These were the views expressed by speakers at a webinar on “COVID-19 in 2021 & beyond/ digital vaccine passports in times of pandemic” organised by Roche Diagnostics Pakistan and Mir Khalil-ur-Rahman Memorial Society, Jang Group of Newspapers.

Roche Diagnostics Pakistan has been actively working with the government, policymakers, clinicians and KOLs to raise awareness and demonstrate value of diagnostics in keeping people safe and building economic stability during this pandemic.

This webinar was also organised with the objective of bringing the relevant stakeholders together on one platform to discuss how Pakistan faced the pandemic and what else remains to be done to effectively combat the pandemic and move towards eventually reopening borders. Panellists of the webinar included Dr Faisal Sultan (Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health) Dr Javed Akram (Vice-Chancellor, University of Health), Lance Little (Managing Director Roche Diagnostic Asia Pacific and Board Member APACMed and Dr Abdul Bari (CEO, Indus Hospital).

This webinar was moderated by Dr Zarfishan Tahir (Dean IPH) and hosted by Wasif Nagi (Pride of Performance, senior Editor and Chairman, MKRMS.

In response to a question regarding ease of restrictions, Dr Faisal Sultan stressed pandemic is not over yet. “We need to be sensible and ensure containing the virus. Precautionary measures must continue. Getting vaccinated is of utmost importance. Right from the beginning of the pandemic, we started building what was required to get the digital information and the first building block was to ensure that all the information on testing of every citizen was captured centrally. The dashboard that you see every morning from Pakistan on testing is all centrally captured digitally and is linked to CNIC number. We built the national immunisation management system directly linked it to Nadra its completely documented captured system. We can also add health-related and other information now that this platform is built for us. The data is there and verifiable.”

Building digital passports is a solution to allow societies to move, said Lance Little said and added, “During this period we are trying to understand how we survive. We need accurate reliable information because now we are living in world where it is difficult to come together in countries, at various events and gatherings. The digital passport could have information about PCR, antigen status, antibody status and vaccine status. The important part here is trust. These passports can provide the mechanism for countries to trust individuals travelling from another country.”

Prof Dr Javed Akram said, “Right now since we are doing trials of about five different vaccines and think that most of vaccines are covering most of strains. We just released data and it is under publication that in Lahore and even in Punjab the pre-dominant variant is still 117 which means 17 variations in RNA. It’s a large size RNA virus rapidly dividing inside the body and even outside the body. It can mutate thirty nine thousand times. Fortunately mutations registered in world are less than 129 and variation in RNA are more common. Unfortunately, all the variations that we are seeing in RNA are spike proteins. Pakistan is a huge country and we have to understand limitations. We are the third largest population in the world and Pakistan is among those countries who are participating in large trials. Vaccines are safe and effective to some extent, but we have to continue to develop new vaccines.”

Dr Abdul Bari commended the efforts of the NCOC and the collaboration of public-private sectors partnerships in containing the spread of the virus.

He acknowledged Roche Diagnostics for coming up with its fully automated PCR tests that has enabled 1,500 tests to be conducted a day, thereby helping to significantly increase the testing capacity of Pakistan.

Speaking about the lack of national IDs that could result in a huge part of the population remaining unvaccinated, Dr Abdul Bari said, “Unfortunately, there are millions of Pakistanis with national IDs who are also not getting vaccinated. So right now, our fight against pandemic is jeopardised by anyone who is eligible but is still not getting vaccinated. Now Pakistan has opened up vaccination for nearly all ages it is important to have some alternative for people without national IDS to get vaccinated. It may be something as simple as verification by an employer or local masjid. With resistance to vaccination, the simpler the processes, the better off we will all be. If there is a fear of poor follow-up, my recommendation would be to give them a single dose vaccination to people and immigrants without CNIC. Therefore some mechanism has to be developed for them.”

Speaking the role of diagnostics in the management of COVID-19, Lance Little spoke about how we are fortunate enough that we have lots of different types of tests being offered by Roche Diagnostics and other diagnostic companies that give tools to the healthcare system to utilise in management of living with this virus in future years. - Wardha Tariq