Additional vaccination null since September 13

 By Mahima Devkota, Kathmandu, Nov.7: The administration of the additional dose of COVID-19 vaccine has been null since September, 13.

Dr Bibek Kumar Lal, Director of the Department of Health Services said that the vaccination campaign has been going slow since the cases have subsided significantly, and has been running at snail pace especially during festivals Dashain and Tihar, however, this does not mean that people are not getting their jabs. 

 He said that due to lack of co-ordination and reporting from local levels,  the daily COVID-19 vaccination status has not been updated, and is seen that vaccination has totally stopped.

he said, "Problems such as lack of willingness of people to get vaccinated, festival season, and lack of multi-media coverage are the very reasons which has slowed the vaccination campaign. In order to address that mass awareness campaign at local levels need to be generated." 

Dr Sanjay Thakur, Spokesperson to the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP), said, "We have distributed the vaccine against COVID-19 to each levels, and there is enough vaccine for administration. The vaccination campaign is running like usual, but, number of people getting their doses has significantly decreased since last two months."

He credited lack of willingness of people to get vaccinated, festival season, and lack of multi- media coverage are the reasons behind it. 

Bade Babu Thapa, senior pharmacy officer at the Supply Management Branch of the Department of Health Services, said that people are not getting vaccinated even though vaccines have reached to each all levels. Vaccinations have been running in districts and local levels, but people are not coming for vaccination. 

He said, "We are co- coordinating to each levels and are implementing the awareness campaign to attract people for vaccination." 

According to him, vaccines have already been distributed to all levels citing the need as per the accelerated vaccination campaign. With this, the chances of vaccine of getting waste has increased, some vials of vaccine will go to waste if the situation continues. For that, discussions have been held to solve the issues. 

Dr Sher Bahadur Pun, Clinical Research Unit at Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Disease Hospital in Teku,  said that the risk of contracting COVID-19 is still there, but the severity and hospitalizations due to it have decreased significantly. However, a vaccine 100 per cent is a best way to be safe from COVID-19. Therefore, additional dose against COVID-19 should not be missed out.