OFTEN our governments are known for taking late decisions — the impact of which is then felt by the people at large but as regards the Covid-19 situation is concerned, the PTI government really deserves appreciation for taking the timely decision of vaccine procurement and free of cost availability to the people.
The Federal Cabinet on Tuesday approved allocating $ 150 million for the procurement of the Coronavirus vaccine in the first quarter of next year. The health workers fighting on the frontline and the elderly people would be vaccinated in the first phase. Indeed the healthcare staff is more at risk and their vaccination must be a priority but the health and life of other people also cannot be overlooked, therefore, the government must ensure sufficient procurement of vaccine and its availability at all the health facilities to cater to the general public. Even if it requires doubling the allocation of resources then it must be done as nothing is more precious than the people’s life. Then, most importantly only a quality vaccine should be purchased after considering various factors including that of its efficacy, safety, side effects, storage requirements, etc. With the cooperation of China, we have already started phase three trial of Covid vaccine and it will be a great honour for Pakistan to be amongst the countries manufacturing its own vaccine. It will prove to be more cost effective but we will have to ensure that it is also produced in sufficient quantity. The second wave of Covid-19 is proving to be more fatal as compared to the first one as the fatalities are on the rise. It is for the federal and provincial governments to further increase their capacity of testing so that the infected people could be isolated or quarantined. A few weeks back Pakistani scientists had developed software based on artificial intelligence that can help detect the virus within a minute. The availability of this software should be ensured at the hospitals to bolster the testing capacity which will go a long way in checking the spread of the pandemic.
