Vaccine rollout of Sri Lanka-How authorities have planned (unplanned) it like a Traveling Circus!
Sri Lanka is a country full of know nothing-do nothing experts. Our vaccine rollout provides a prime example of ineptness & corruptness of those experts. The only difference is, they cannot coverup their ineptness and corruptness through lies and misinformation when it comes to human deaths. The experts and politicians should realize at least now that the lies and misinformation campaigns cannot deter a virus.
Around this time last year they (experts and politicians) were congratulating themselves for being the second best country in the world in terms of pandemic management. The fact that no such ranking ever existed did not seem to matter at all.
Earlier this year, when they got 500K Covishield vaccines as a donation, they congratulated themselves as a pioneering country when it comes to vaccination. The truth is, if we look at an objective indicator such as Number of vaccines administered/Population Sri Lanka is ranked at 100 as of 13th June 2021!
I hope the misinformation engine will not misinterpret this as Sri Lanka scoring 100% on global vaccine rollout!
The sad truth is, if “our experts” adopted the global standard practice of age based prioritization, the 60+ population of Sri Lanka would have gotten at least one dose by now. (60+ population of Sri Lanka is about 2.6 million and we have administered around that many to date).
Alas! we all know how the prioritization happened in Sri Lanka. So how did we get here?
The first announcement was that the first priority group would be front line health workers and security forces. Later it was corrected as security forces who are involved in pandemic management activities. So far so good.
The next group as per the initial communication was 60+ population. Our experts are so inept that they lack in basic arithmetic skills. Or they think they can somehow bend simple numbers just as they bend public opinion at their will. No one really bothered to answer how exactly we are going to vaccinate 2.6 million 60+ population with less than 500 thousand doses at hand!
Then the politicians somehow nominated themselves as a high risk hence high priority group! Then they took a massive U turn and announced that the priority will be given to the 30–60 working population. So much for lambasting other countries during early stages of the pandemic for mistreating their adult populations!
Then it was announced that it’s not 30–60 population but 30+ population. This was still with less than 500K doses at hand while the 30+ population being well over 10 million! As usual no one bothered to provide answers on these ridiculous contradictions.
Then the experts moved on to geographical prioritization. Then all the ministers announced that it is their ministry employees who should be given priority. And the final chapter of this absolute debacle is doctors saying “f*** you all” and just using which ever left on their family and friends! So much for the vaccine rollout pioneer in the world.
In my opinion the experts are criminally responsible for every 60+ Covid 19 death in this country from now onwards!
With the full knowledge and very depressing realization of very little will be changed in terms of the vaccine rollout even in the future, let me put some numbers that I think are attainable.
The global vaccine supply is projected to surpass the global demand over second half of this year. Therefore we are very likely to receive the 25+million doses we need for vaccination over the next 6 months.
Based on the above underlying fact and the statements made by the head of state pharmaceutical corporation, let us assume the following high level rollout plan.
Then the high level plan can be broken down to weeks, age groups, vaccination centers and first and second doses.
The simple fact of the matter is we need to have fixed vaccination centers. New centers can be added as the supply increases. With the assumption of one vaccination center (VC) administrating about 1000 doses per day, an age based rollout plan should look something like this.
It will obviously be more convenient to the public if larger VCs can be replaced with more of smaller scale VCs. As an example 1 VC administering 1000 doses per day can be replaced with 2 VCs administering 500 doses each. However administratively and logistically it will be more difficult, especially given the ineptness of those who are responsible. Hence passing the burden of travel to the public would probably be the more effective option.
A plan like above would clearly prescribe which age group would be vaccinated on each week. Hence it will provide transparency and visibility to the vaccination process.
Moreover, the logistics, human resources and public communications will be significantly easier to manage with a rollout plan that involves fixed VCs.
Finally, if it needs further justification, it will simply reduce the number of deaths due to Covid 19 decidedly.
