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COVID-19 vaccination: Govt. set to give second shot from mid-April, says task force chief
The first batch of people who have been vaccinated from January 29 will be expected to have their booster or second shot by mid-April, Presidential Vaccine Task Force Chief Lalith Weeratunga told the Sunday Times.
“We have plans for the second round,” Mr. Weeratunga said but admitted well-designed plans could go wrong on the ground and added that the State Intelligence Service (SIS) was keeping a tab on the situation.
Government’s rollout of the 500,000 vaccine doses (Phase II of community vaccination) which arrived in the country from India this week began on Friday in the high-risk areas of the Colombo and Gampaha districts of the Western Province.
Mr. Weeratunga said the programme would start for over 30s in the ‘most vulnerable’ Grama Niladhari (GN) divisions and then be rolled out to the ‘least vulnerable’ GN divisions covering the whole of the Western Province population of around 4.5 million people, while the Director-General of Health Services had sent out instructions that “both permanent and temporary residents” in these areas should be vaccinated.
Mr. Weeratunga said that would also depend on the number of doses the country had in hand.
“When we get the doses, they will be used in that fashion. If we get a million and a half in the next month or so, then that will be used at that time,” he said, adding that at the same time, the health authorities would be keeping tabs on all other areas outside the Western Province to see whether COVID-19 raised its head and would vaccinate people in those areas, if there was a need.
“It’s the Western Province first and then a rollout to the other areas but in case there is some unusual activities (outbreak), we will deploy the vaccines there as well,” Mr. Weeratunga said.
He pointed out that they were looking at the country’s situation on a daily basis and there was a “fantastic chart” that was prepared and sent to the President every morning before he met with the Secretary of Health and other high-level health officials. The high-risk areas can be determined from this.
“We want to stop the transmission of COVID-19 by vaccinating as many as possible in the ‘red’ divisions, as the Western Province has around 80 percent of the infected,” he said.
However, in Colombo city, the vaccination programme went into disarray with the Municipal Council running a haphazard, disorganised system with six centres catering to a population of more than half a million residents.
Health Ministry officials said the CMC was running its own centres without seeking the help of the ministry to support it. In many centres this week, residents were unaware how to get vaccinated, with haphazard registration systems and many being turned away from centres as vaccinations ran out and separate queues announced for over 60s, non-existent.
(See also Page 10)