KATHMANDU, DECEMBER 26
As new variants of COV- ID-19 pandemic continue to mutate, governments need to make their policies and preparation compatible with the risk posed by the fast-spreading pandemic, but Nepal government has no such plan.
Infectious disease expert Anup Subedee said that Vero Cell vaccine proved to be less effective against the Delta variant of COVID-19 and when the Omicron variant started to spread, the government should have looked for more effective vaccines, but it continued to provide Vero Cell.
Subedee said influential people, who knew that Vero Cell was not very effective, had avoided getting its dose, but common people had no option. He said bureaucrats had not made a good plan to reach remote areas of the country to provide COV- ID-19 vaccines to the vulnerable population. He said booster shots should be made available to at least frontline health workers who provided service to COVID-19 patients.
Former director of the Epidemiology and Disease Control Division, Department of Health, Baburam Marasini said that the government lacked a well thought-out plan to tackle the pandemic. "Hill and mountain regions will be covered by snow with the onset of winter and it will be difficult for government staff to go to hill and mountain areas to provide vaccines,"
Marasini said. He added that the government was not providing vaccines immediately after getting the supply from donors.
He said the government should provide the third dose of COVID-19 vaccines as it appeared that people might need it to ward off the pandemic. "People may need more doses after the third dose and only additional doses after the third dose should be termed booster shots. We may need booster shots after three or five years as determined by the government," he added.
As of now, the government has received 40 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from donors. Marasini said that if the government did not change its plan, it would not be in a position to meet its target of vaccinating all population by mid-April.
He said that government authorities were behind schedule for vaccinating the rural population and children below 18.
Assistant Spokesperson for the health ministry Samir Kumar Adhikari said that he did not have data on the stock of COVID-19 vaccines as vaccines were being stored by all three tiers of the government.
He said that the government had not yet okayed the plan to provide the third dose to the population. "We have decided to provide the third dose to the vulnerable population, particularly those with a weakened immune system, but we are yet to fix the date for starting vaccine campaign for such people," Adhikari added.
Adhikari said the government had been vaccinating children between the age of 12 and 18. He, however, said that he did not have data on the number of children who had received COV- ID-19 vaccines.
He said that the government was trying to accelerate vaccination drive for children by setting up camps at schools. Asked if Nepal faced a risk that Nigeria faced recently when it had to destroy one million doses of COVID-19 vaccines due to short shelf life, Adhikari said that some consignments had indeed short shelf life, but the government had used all of them without having to destroy them.
As of today, 131,75,597 people have received one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, whereas 99,96,380 people have received both the doses of the vaccine.
A version of this article appears in the print on December 27, 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
