Amarendra Yadav

Nepali Congress (NC) president Sher Bahadur Deuba has started his fifth innings as Prime Minister as the country stares at the resurgence of the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bearing in mind the crippling impact of the pandemic on the public health and nation’s economy, Prime Minister Deuba has repeatedly emphasised vaccinating all people against COVID-19 as early as possible.
Speaking at the meeting of House of Representatives (HoR) prior to the vote of confidence on July 18, Prime Minister Deuba announced that inoculating the entire population against the deadly virus was the topmost priority of his government. Just a day after the announcement, he inaugurated a new vaccination drive with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine provided by the United States. On the same day, the government decided to request all vaccine producing countries to provide the life-saving jabs to Nepal either in grant or through procurement process.

Inoculation drive
On July 23, while addressing the HoR meeting, PM Deuba reiterated his commitment to administering anti-COVID shots to all people: “No matter how expensive they are, we will purchase the vaccines for the people from anywhere.” On July 25, Finance Minister Janardan Sharma said that the government would fully invest in procuring COVID-19 vaccines so as to achieve early economic recovery because it was only with the means of vaccination that the country would get rid of pandemic. The country came under the grip of COVID-19 pandemic for the first time in March last year. Now more than 10,000 people have succumbed to the virus, with over 700,000 infection cases. The country is still struggling to come out of the second wave of the pandemic. When it was at its peak in last April and May, the country recorded over 200 deaths and around 9,000 cases on a daily basis.

With the gradual decline in the number of daily infections and deaths, the government lifted most of restrictions month ago. As a result, the graph of COVID-19 cases and death toll has been rising for the last few weeks. The Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) has warned that the third wave of the coronavirus might grip the country from early October this year. Many countries are already grappled with the third wave of tis contagion. Health experts in India have also forecasted the inevitability of the third wave. Given the open border between Nepal and India as well as close social and cultural interactions of the two peoples, the new variants of virus are proliferating in Nepal, too.

The third wave can be more fatal mainly because of the deadly Delta variant of COVID-19. According to health experts, the coronavirus is here to stay for long and the humankind would unfortunately face several waves of COVID-19. So, vaccination is the only alternative to save people from the pandemic.
So, the Deuba government should intensify the vaccination drive across the country to immunise entire population as soon as possible.
The Indian government had first provided one million doses of Covishield vaccine under grant assistance. Subsequently, Nepal launched its maiden vaccination campaign on January 27. Then Nepal government signed a deal with the Serum Institute of India in February to purchase two million doses of Covishield. However, the company supplied only one million doses due to an export ban imposed by the Indian government on its vaccine manufacturing companies. Since the devastating second wave has largely been subsiding in India, Nepal government expects the supply of the remaining one million doses from the Serum Institute soon.
The government has planned to procure additional 10 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines by mid-October. Similarly, according to a high-level official of the MoHP, the government would procure 30 million doses by mid-April next year. As per the recent data of the government, over 3 million doses of Vero Cell vaccines and around 1.5 million doses of Janssen vaccines were available in July. Consequently, the vaccines of these two companies are being administered to the people. Authorities have claimed the government is in talks with vaccine manufacturing companies like Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech for the procurement of additional vaccines.

Vaccines for youngsters
Currently, only adult population above the age of 18 is being inoculated in Nepal. But, many countries have already begun vaccinating their population aged between 12 and 18. According to the latest data from the MoHP, around 56,000 children under 18 years have been infected with coronavirus. So, the government should immunise its younger population. If the government succeeds in procuring Pfizer vaccines, adolescents should be inoculated.

Over 3.5 million people have received the first dose of vaccines while more than 1.5 million have been fully vaccinated till date. Thus, around 5.1 per cent of the population is fully immunised. So, the number of fully vaccinated population is very low and millions of adults are yet to be inoculated. The government has assured that the country will not face the shortage of vaccines again. But another burning issue is: whether the government will distribute the vaccines in a fair manner. If the government immunises all its citizens on time, it will be evaluated as a successful administration. Therefore, equal and timely distribution of vaccines does not only enhance the government’s credibility but this will also save the people from the fatal disease viral and enable the country to gain early economic recovery.

(Yadav is the journalist at The Rising Nepal)