Pakistan has finally started the coronavirus vaccination drive with the first shot administered to a doctor in Islamabad. The nation has finally commenced the largest inoculation campaign as it aims to vaccinate every citizen against the disease which has wreaked havoc with our lives.
This comes just a day after the first batch of COVID-19 vaccines arrived from Beijing after being airlifted by a special plane. The Chinese had gifted 500,000 doses to Pakistan to help with the relief efforts. This is just the beginning as the nation immediately needs 1.1 million to vaccinate frontline healthcare workers and elderly people in the first phase.
There are numerous challenges ahead in the vaccination drive. The government is falling behind in registering all healthcare workers and would struggle to prioritize who receives the jabs. The biggest challenge would be to procure more coronavirus vaccines. Federal Minister Asad Umar, who heads the NCOC, said Pakistan has secured 17 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the WHO’s Covax and six million of them will be received by March and the rest by mid-June.
The arrival of the vaccine has also started vaccine politics in the nation. The NCOC has said it has sent the doses to all federating units and provinces will start their own campaigns. A day earlier, Asad Umar criticized the Sindh government for politicizing the vaccine issue despite not having a single dose of the vaccine and said it should be standing in lines for vaccines and asked for the federal government.
The Sindh government had claimed it procured its own vaccine but was not given permission by the federation. This was sharply denied by Asad Umar but it has started a bitter war of words with the provincial government as both sides traded accusations over the matter. Irrespective of who is involved, any attempt to politicize the vaccine campaign should be condemned.
The coronavirus pandemic affects all of us and requires collective effort to fight together rather than dividing over it. The world witnessed vaccine nationalism as it started a race to build the first vaccine. The distribution of the vaccine saw more divisions as rich nations hoarded vaccines rather than equitable access. Now the vaccine drive is leading to vaccine politics which serves no purpose than hamper our efforts against the virus.
