Vaccine procurement
The government has announced its Covid-19 vaccination priorities and also its import plans. While the vaccination priority list is mostly uncontroversial and in line with international standards — i.e. to start with the elderly and frontline workers before moving on to other at-risk groups and then to the general public — the delivery methods still leave much to be desired. For one, arrangements have so far only been made to procure 55 million doses. That is barely enough for a quarter of the country’s population.
Let’s see what other countries of the world are doing in the context. Canada has already purchased four times its requirement. European Union member states have purchased twice as much as what they need. Even the worst managed country of all — the United States of America — has paid for almost twice its requirement. Neighbouring India too had already secured contracts for 59% of its requirement by the end of the previous month.
Already, the government’s best-case scenario appears to be to make the vaccine widely available by the end of 2021 (even though, according to government officials, the vaccination process will start in the second quarter of the next year). That means almost a full year before we can achieve some semblance of herd immunity to the deadly microbe that has brought the whole world to its knees. It is just too long to wait for our country — which ranks at 29 in the world in terms of the Covid-19 cases, numbering 44,326 as of yesterday — to safely return to the pre-pandemic normalcy.
And while some may accuse rich countries of stockpiling, the fact of the matter is that they have mostly bought the Pfizer-Moderna vaccine, which has high effectiveness but is also more expensive and far more difficult to store. Even if money was not an object, most developing countries, Pakistan included, lack the supply chain to effectively deliver it.
Thus, Pakistan needs to negotiate for a much increased and quick supply of the more economical options. This should not be restricted to the Russian and Chinese vaccines, but should also include the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, which is over 90% effective and is also the cheapest on the market so far. The other problem is that by allowing the private sector to purchase and sell the vaccine, the government is effectively driving up the price for and undercutting supply for itself.
While some feel that this will help people get the vaccine quicker, it is actually an indictment of the government. This does not mean that the government should block the private sector entirely, but it should at least defer import permissions till the time it has secured enough doses to vaccinate the entire country to prevent influential people from cutting the line.
We are already seeing this in the United States, where White House officials are recklessly throwing ‘super-spreader’ Christmas and farewell parties while also ‘booking’ doses for themselves, even though they do not meet the priority category requirements. The private sector can be allowed to import the more expensive options or additional doses of the cheaper variants, but only to ensure that — despite having a guaranteed free vaccination option — those willing to pay for convenience can do so.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 16th, 2020.
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