Many countries around the world have started administering COVID-19 vaccines but Pakistan’s inoculation programme is still mired uncertainty and could take several months to commence. Pakistan has set up the first vaccination centre in Islamabad and registered frontline healthcare workers who will be prioritized in receiving the jabs but there is no indication when the vaccines will arrive. The phase III trial of the Chinese vaccine in the country have also not been completed, and hence the efficacy of the vaccine has not been determined before it could be approved by health authorities.
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan said that the government has pre-booked more than a million doses of China’s SinoPharm vaccine but has not said when the vaccine could reach, except that the programme would commence in the first quarter of the year. He said Pakistan is also making efforts to bringing Western vaccines notably the one by Pfizer and Moderna but this is also unlikely to happen anytime soon as rich countries have pre-booked the vaccine for the next six months and would not share with other countries until they have met their needs.
On the other hand, India has already commenced the world’s largest vaccination drive and has started inoculating healthcare workers. Interestingly, India has already developed two homegrown vaccines to find the pandemic. The Oxford-AstraZeneca family which is being administered in UK was built in India and countries like Brazil sent special aircraft to collect them. Another vaccine by Indian drug company Bharat Biotech, although disapproved by health experts for taking a shortcut and without the necessary trials to determine the efficacy, is also been administered in several Indian states.
More than 35 million doses of various COVID-19 vaccines have been administered around the world including ten million in the United States. This shows that our fears that many countries may have to wait months or probably years to receive the vaccine are coming true. The WHO said that it is highly unlikely that herd immunity which would require at least 70 percent of the globe to be vaccinated could be achieved this year.
Pakistan’s healthcare system and pharmaceutical companies are unable to handle local production of COVID-19 vaccine. We also failed to place an early order for the vaccine and have to wait in a long queue before we receive the vaccine and finally start our immunization programme.
