Inoculation plan falters

The government's week-long Covid-19 vaccination programme scheduled  to begin on Saturday to jab an estimated one crore people as part of its comprehensive grandiose plan to vaccinate a total of 8 crore citizens in a two-month period to prevent the rapid spread of the  deadly pandemic has stumbled a bit before it gets started.  

The government authority on Wednesday altered its mass Covid vaccination campaign, planned for August 7-12 , citing a core reason of shortage of manpower. "The vaccination will take place only in a single day on August 7. Later on, we will restart under a new campaign after a seven-day pause," reportedly said Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) Director General Prof Dr ABM Khurshid Alam.

According to reports, the decision of rescheduling the Covid vaccination campaign was taken at a high-level meeting of the government on Wednesday. Mentionable, the government has aimed at jabbing 3.2 million people in the day-long vaccination drive across the country on  August 7 (Saturday). On that day, the first dose of Covid vaccine will be administered in one session in 15,287 wards across unions, municipalities and city corporations. 

It may be mentioned here that Bangladesh News carried an article under the title "Is BD biting off more than it can chew? on Wednesday in which it cast doubt whether the government has the capability and available resources to carry out vaccination campaign covering 8 crore people in just two-month span with one crore to be vaccinated in a week.    

The news was as follows:  "When Foreign Minister Dr. AK Abdul Momen on Monday said that Bangladesh had planned to jab nearly half of the country's total population within the next two months, it was considered a major breakthrough to break the back of the ongoing deadly Covid-19 pandemic. 

But given the current scenario of the country's health sector manned with inadequate staffers like physicians, nurses, laboratory technicians and other health workers in a situation already busy with thousands of Covid infected patients across the country every day, is it possible on the part of our healthcare system to administer Covid shots to over eight crore people during the planned period?" 

Meanwhile, Bangladesh has so far vaccinated only around close to one crore 40 lakh citizens since launching the nationwide vaccination campaign on February 7.  According to reports, when it comes to vaccinating people against Covid-19, Bangladesh still comes with a poor show having just 8.1 shots injected to every 100 people.

The walk-in Covid-19 vaccination campaign for anyone over 18 years, which includes city corporation areas, union parishads and municipalities across the country, is set to begin from Saturday.

Health Minister Zahid Maleque on July 25 informed the media that as the government had ensured a regular supply of Covid-19 vaccines, planning was being done to vaccinate 10 million people in August.

On July 28, a draft plan for the vaccination program prepared by the DGHS was sent to the Health Ministry. The plan envisaged administering by union parishads and municipalities of the Sinopharm vaccine.

Within three days, the plan changed to include the city corporation areas since a good number of people in those areas are not tech-savvy and could not register despite being interested in taking vaccines, DGHS sources said.

Another DGHS official said initially it was planned to provide vaccines on three days but it might be lessened as there is an issue of completing registration of people later.

Asked about the possible shortage of the vaccine in providing a second dose, a divisional director said it had been ensured that a further supply was on the way.

According to the current plan, the DGHS is planning to provide 8,680,000 doses of vaccine at union parishad booths and 632,400 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine at municipality booths, until more vaccines are procured. The DGHS also decided to administer vaccines at 433 booths in city corporation areas across the country.