Kazi Zahidul Hasan/ Reza Mahmud :
Bangladesh has so far been able to vaccinate only 2.6 per cent of its total population and experts said if the situation does not improve, it could lead to multiple socio-economic challenges.
As of July 7, Bangladesh has fully vaccinated 4.29 million people or just 2.6 per cent of its population of 168 million since the start of the nationwide Covid-19 inoculation programme on February 7, 2021.
In the USA 48 per cent of people are fully vaccinated, while more than 45.4 million people in the UK have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine – part of the biggest inoculation programme the country has ever launched.
India has vaccinated 4.8 per cent of its population, while Sri Lanka has reached 5.7 per cent, Nepal 2.7 per cent, Maldives 37.6 per cent, Pakistan 1.6 per cent and Afghanistan 0.5 per cent, according to Our World in data.
India yesterday administered 2.41 million vaccines of first dose and 11.95 vaccines of second dose while Pakistan administered 3.33 vaccines of first dose and 0.79 million vaccines of second dose.
“Bangladesh’s vaccination drive is moving at a very slow pace due mainly to lack of adequate supply of vaccines,” said Dr Muzaherul Huq, former regional advisor for South East Asia at World Health Organisation (WHO).
He said Bangladesh is now seeing an alarming spike in the daily Covid deaths amid a deadly outbreak sparked by the highly-contagious Delta variant. “The new variant poses the greatest threat to the countries like Bangladesh which are poorly vaccinated”.
When asked, Dr Muzaherul Huq said, “Revolving lockdown is unviable in Bangladesh’s perspective. Such a harsh measure only adds economic misery and affects the livelihoods of many who barely survive with daily income.”
“I think massive vaccination is the only solution. This will help curtail the spread of infection to some extend, save fatalities to a great extent, and achieve herd immunity. Considering the fact, the authorities should ramp up the ongoing vaccination drive by boosting supply of vaccines by expediting diplomacy with vaccine producing nationals,” he said.
Dr Huq also said that the government should also take initiative for co-production of Covid-19 vaccines to ensure rapid supply of jabs. “China is supplying vaccines to more than 100 countries and they are also providing technical support as well as technology transfer to the nations in vaccine production. We can also take the opportunity.”
Responding to a question, he said, “We have to vaccinate minimum 70pc of our population which is about 12.50 crore people with 2 doses to achieve herd immunity.”
Bangladesh is undergoing through a strict Covid-19 lockdown amid an “alarming and dangerous” rise in virus cases and deaths, blamed largely on the highly infectious Delta variant first identified in neighbouring India.
The lockdown enforced last week has made millions of workers in the country’s informal economy jobless and thus threatens to their life and livelihood.
“The restriction measures imposed repeatedly to contain the virus are yet to work. Poor and marginal people are coming out of their homes during lockdown in search of their life and livelihood,” observed economist Dr Ahsan Mansur.
He told The New Nation: “The lockdown seems turn ineffective in-term of its core objective. It only ruins the national economy because of the closures of major sectors.”
Underlying the importance of a massive vaccination, Dr Ahsan Mansur said, “We need to do our daily work, maintain our social life, open schools, businesses, take care of our economy; we will be able to do all this only when we are able to vaccinate ourselves at a fast pace.”
He also said that the massive vaccination programme is also necessary to send Bangladeshi workers abroad and keep the flow of inward remittance unhurt.
Bangladesh’s remittance income hit a record high of $24.77 billion in the just concluded fiscal year (2020-21).
When contacted, Public Health Expert Dr. Lenin Chowdhury told The New Nation on Wednesday, “Inoculation campaign is frequently ‘off and on’ as per availability of jabs in the country, this is not mass vaccination.”
“The government seemed had not planned for mass vaccination of 70 to 80 pc of population to achieve the herd immunity. They had been found in complacency after signing MoU with India’s Serum Institute for getting supply of three crore of AstraZeneca vaccine. The government’s dependence on single source has made the situation greatly complicated today. They had not tried for bringing more jabs. This is behind the current vaccine crisis,” he said.
The experts opined the government has to target mass vaccination to 70 to 80pc people within six months as the vaccines would be available in world market after developed countries completed inoculation campaign within October and November.
