Vaccine hesitancy

Although Sri Lanka’s vaccination programme against COVID-19 has been hailed by many the prospects of attaining herd immunity or the Community immunity is still in the balance. According to the Epidemiology Unit of the Health Ministry only around 14 million out of a population of around 22 million in the country have been fully vaccinated or given two doses of vaccines. This is just 63%.  

Herd immunity, according to medical experts occurs when a significant portion of a population becomes immune to an infectious disease, limiting further spread of the disease. Some epidemiologists including those in the US have estimated that 70% of the worldwide population would need to be vaccinated against COVID 19 to establish herd immunity.   

However, this percentage may vary from country to country on the basis of behavior and from variant to variant of the virus, on the basis of their rapidity of spread. For instance, for Delta variant which has a higher potential to spread compared to the previous variants this threshold estimate goes well over 80% and may be approaching 90%, according to experts. Given the fact that Omicron variant, the dominant strain currently in Sri Lanka is spreading faster than Delta variant, according to Dr. Chandima Jeewandara of the Sri Jayawardenepura University, Sri Lanka is well below the herd immunity level.   

However, now we are in a position to fully open the country, opening all schools, calling all public sector employees to work at their respective offices and opening the airports for tourists. It was clear that travel restrictions had only a limited impact in containing the pandemic in Sri Lanka as it had become a ridiculous farce. We witnessed huge traffic jams during the lockdowns as the implementing officials as well as the people had chosen to ignore such restrictions. It was indeed the vaccination programme that helped contain the spread of the pandemic to the current level, despite the flaws in it due to politicization of it.   

We remember that some ministers told Parliament that we don’t need vaccine when Opposition parties accused the government for not placing orders for vaccines in time. Elderly people were ignored at the initial stage of inoculation; despite them being on top of the vaccination priority lists of the World Health Organization (WHO) and our Health Ministry, leading to high number of deaths among people over 60 years of age during the third wave of pandemic in the country. Instead, priority was given to areas chosen by politicians, calling them hotspots without any scientific basis. In many areas people were not properly informed of the places and the times of vaccination by the Health Ministry.   

If not for the vaccination drive by the Army, people wouldn’t have been encouraged and instilled confidence in vaccination, at least to the current level. And, with the arrival of sufficient vaccines into the country the authorities have managed to fully inoculate more than half of the population. Yet, that does not mean that we are out of the woods. The daily infection count is again surging and surpassed the 1000 mark on Monday, after the recent long weekend and health authorities warn that it might further mount to a dangerous proportion, as the Omicron variant has the potential to spread fast.   

The Epidemiology Unit of the Health Ministry said on January 27 that 16,583,724 people have received the first dose of vaccine while the number of people received the second and the booster jabs was 13, 897,682 and 5, 046,823 respectively. Authorities are lamenting that people are hesitant to get their jab lately, which is clearly evident with these statistics. It is clear another four million people have to be inoculated with two doses for the country to achieve herd immunity (if it is 80%). Also, there is a vast gap of around three million people between those who have got their first dose and the second dose. The gap between the number of people who have received both first and second doses and those who have been administered with the third (booster) dose is more than 8 million.   

Only the state of herd immunity would give an assurance that the community is safe. This is applicable not only to a country, but also to the world, despite powerful countries having hoarded four or five times of vaccines than the population of their countries, while poor countries are suffering without vaccines. Hence, anyone who does not support the society to achieve herd immunity is acting against the humankind.   

Since, the current vaccine hesitancy in Sri Lanka is attributed to many misgivings, political parties, trade unions, civil society organizations and the religious leaders have a duty to give their fullest support to the health authorities to allay those fears. It must be recalled that the UNICEF had successfully used the religious places - the mosques - to allay fears and misgivings on vaccination against polio in Afghanistan - a country way behind Sri Lanka in literacy - during the previous Taliban regime between 1996 and 2001. Religion has such an impact on the people in this part of the world.