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On the day following the enactment of the controversial Port City Bill which enshrined China’s solid presence on the island as a legal tenant in the Lankan law books, enjoying undisturbed possession of a 2.69 square km land mass next to the capital’s heart for the next 99 years, the American Government may have showed its evident displeasure toward the country’s paradigm shift East by pricking the nation where it hurt most: the health of the Lankan People.

America’s self-proclaimed paternalistic role as the world’s sole reigning superpower, professing a creed of reaching out to humanity beyond borders sounded a discordant note last Saturday when it was revealed that the Biden Administration was wavering over their decision whether to include Sri Lanka in its list of nations earmarked to get a share of its stockpile of some 60 million Oxford AstraZeneca vaccines in June.

US PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Reaffirms his commitment to share his country’s good fortune with less blessed nations but will Lanka be on the favoured list or be kenneled in America’s dog house

Hopes that Sri Lanka was a confirmed recipient of the AstraZeneca vaccine had been raised when the Chairman of the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation of Sri Lanka said at a meeting held at the Presidential Secretariat last Friday that the US State Department is to give 2-5 million doses of AstraZeneca out of which 600,000 doses are expected to arrive by June.

State Health Minister of Production, Supply and Regulation of Pharmaceuticals Professor Channa Jayasumana also told the media on May 18, three days before the Port City Bill was enacted, that Sri Lanka was on the list of nations to be given a consignment of the AstraZeneca vaccines, under President Biden’s plan to donate America’s excess vaccines. “We expect to receive a portion of these excess AstraZeneca vaccines,” he said.

US Embassy spokesperson Nancy VanHorn told the media last Saturday of US plans to share about 13 percent of the vaccines produced for the United States by the end of June. She said, “We will work with COVAX and other partners to ensure these vaccines are delivered in a way that is equitable and follows the science and public health data. We don’t yet know which countries will be receiving vaccines, but a decision will be made soon.”

VanHorn said that on May 17, President Biden reaffirmed his commitment to leading an international and coordinated vaccination effort, announcing that the US will provide 80 million doses of vaccines to meet global needs but warned the United States still remained in two minds whether to include Sri Lanka in the list of beneficiaries of Covid vaccines it intends to share with the world.

From a broad American perspective, America’s bad blood over Lanka’s slippery slide towards China’s gravitational pull is, perhaps, understandable.  For years she has treated the former British colony, Lanka, as a natural ally, sharing the same democratic ideals and a capitalistic economic policy which had made her Lanka’s largest trading partner. Throughout the years, a generous amount of American aid had flowed, even though it had not been in tidal waves successive Lankan governments may have expected it to be.

But the once sweet chummy relationship that existed between the two unequal nations soured no sooner an Oriental Genie appeared on the desolate Lankan land scape, promising to grant Lanka’s every wish in her quest for prosperity provided it met with its own hegemonic interest to expand her regional and global power. With one whispered condition, though: should Lanka default on payback day, she would forfeit hocked assets as punishment. Giving a twist to Britain’s old colonial policy used to build her far flung empire of ‘the flag following trade’, here was the new neo colonial version of ‘the flag following loans.’

Thus while the Lankan Government, with a loud roar of patriotism, tore up America’s MCC agreement, scorning a gift of US$ 480 million to improve the country’s infrastructure, it had displayed no such chauvinistic inhibitions when it came to accepting unlimited Chinese aid to develop its ports, to build the Mattala airport, to build its highways, its coal plant, even to build on Lankan waters a brand new city they themselves would occupy for the next 99 years.

If the American Government had been miffed at the rate of Chinese expansion in Lanka and appalled at Lanka’s inordinate worship to the Eastern hemisphere’s new Rising Sun, then the incorporation of the Chinese built, Chinese hoisted, Chinese occupied and dominated Colombo Port City into law and to the body politic, would have been the last straw needed to awake the superpower to the consequences that ensue when it takes long held relationships for granted and abandons friendly impoverished nations to the mercy of their foes.

On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden called for a deeper investigation to probe the origins of the virus and called on China to assist the international probe. In a statement, Biden said the majority of the US intelligence community had “coalesced” around two likely scenarios: that the virus was transmitted to humans via contact with an infected animal, or it emerged from a lab accident.  The Chinese Embassy in Washington immediately dismissed the idea as a “conspiracy theory.’’

But while Biden may deem it necessary to probe the source of the virus, whether it came from a Wuhan bat or a Wuhan lab, the more important task at hand is to treat the wound and not the arrow’s source. The arrow may belong to a government. But the sore suffered belongs to the people.

Take the present wretched plight of the 600,000 who along with 325,000 others first received the first dose of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, shortly after it was approved for emergency use by the World Health Organisation.

The vaccine was first administered to the frontline workers, to those in the health sector, members of the Armed Forces and Police and to parliamentary members. After these prioritised groups were inoculated, Colombo residents were then in line to receive their vaccinations.

The second round of vaccinating the prioritised groups with the remaining 300,000 odd AstraZeneca doses saved for the purpose began in late April, with the Government promising steps will be taken to procure the second dose for the remaining 600,000 before the deadline, for the period during which the second dose must be given for optimum effect, ran out.

On May 1, Government health officials said Sri Lanka is looking at sources other than India to purchase the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in view of delay in securing the vaccines from the Serum Institute of India.

Desperate at its failure to procure the AstraZeneca vaccine on time, the Government even toyed with the idea of giving mix and match cocktails, until the WHO declared it had not approved of giving one brand as the first dose and another as the second.

Hopes faded fast with the Government giving up on its bid to secure the AstraZeneca vaccine from India and announcing it planned to turn to other nations to secure it. In mid-May, Colombo Mayor Rosy Senanayake issued a statement assuring the people that she has used her local and international network to obtain the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and that it will be available within two weeks. Similarly the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce also issued application forms on its own asking its members to register themselves and their staff to obtain the AstraZeneca vaccine they hoped to secure soon and provide at Rs, 5000 per jab.

The following day, May 19 the Government shot down the private sector initiative stating the Government was not in a position to acquire a separate stock for the private sector of the AstraZeneca doses and the private sector would be included in the national vaccination programme where jabs would be administered free of charge.

Soon the Government, which had initially dragged its feet in securing the vaccines at the market price, finally decided it will be willing to pay any price to obtain the elusive AstraZeneca. The Daily Mirror newspaper reported on Wednesday, a senior cabinet minister as saying the cabinet of ministers yesterday discussed the issue and decided the government was willing to purchase the stocks at any quoted price. We just desperately need these 600,000 doses of AstraZeneca as the government is aware of its obligation to provide the dose to those who received the first jabs.

This Thursday, in response to an inquiry from the Chairman of the State Pharmaceutical Corporation as to the possibility of AstraZeneca validating as genuine vaccines obtained from third parties, AstraZeneca Ltd. warned of the inherent dangers in such seedy transactions. In a letter to the Chairman, it said it had learnt that numerous private traders and companies had been approaching the government in Sri Lanka to sell the COVID-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca.

It said: ‘There is currently no private sector supply, sale or distribution of the vaccine. If a trader or company other than AstraZeneca offers private vaccines, it is likely counterfeit, so should be refused and reported to the relevant authorities.”

While the Government rush was on to find the elusive AstraZeneca, the situation on the ground turned grim when it was revealed that the all powerful government doctors’ union, the GMOA, had used its privileged position to get doctors’ wives, children, fathers, mothers, family members, even their servants vaccinated with the AstraZeneca second dose.

This caused a furore in the ranks of the Public Health Inspectors’ Union on Tuesday at the Health Ministry’s decision to grant this privilege only to doctors ignoring .other health workers, who also face the same risk in the fight against COVID. The infuriated PHIs Union Head, Upul Rohana, declared that it is important to vaccinate the family members of other officials such as nurses, paramedics, junior staff members and all other members linked to the health sector. ‘Accordingly,’ Upul Rohan said, ‘we have decided to withdraw from all services at these MOH offices in a bid to show our protest,”

Next in line to join the queue to strike was the Grama Niladhari Association (GNA) which rightly complained that let alone their families, even they had not received the vaccine. Condemning the arbitrary action of the GMOA of taking power into its own hands, the GNA President Sumith Kodikara said on Wednesday: ‘A total number of 12,000 Grama Niladharis across the country have decided to stay away from all their duties and to join hands with the TU and continue our action from tonight.’

Faced with the possible crippling of the system at grassroots level, the Government’ answer was not to give them the vaccinations they desperately sought but by an extraordinary gazette notification issued the following day to proclaim services rendered by Grama Niladharis, among others, as an essential service.

Meanwhile the connected, the influential, the monied or simply the fortunate out of the stranded 600,000 made prisoners to the AstraZeneca after getting it as their first dose, had no qualms of making their own hay while the sun shone on a privileged grouping. Alerted by a network of contacts through WhatsApp messages, they rushed from one centre to another in the hope of getting the jab.

For them, as it was for the doctors and their families and friends, as it was for similar groups who exploited the opportunity their privilege granted to get their kith and kin vaccinated on the sly, it was a case of ‘each one for oneself and God for us all.’ And who can blame them, when negligence and total mismanagement by the authorities to procure adequate doses of the AstraZeneca on time and organise its dispensation in an orderly systematic manner which guaranteed fair distribution to all, lay at the heart of the original sin?

Thus, even at this eleventh hour when more than 500,000 AstraZeneca hostages still remain in a wretched state, hapless and forsaken in the midst of this virulent COVID third wave, a public appeal must be made to US President Joe Biden to touch the rosary he carries with him in his pocket gifted to him by his dead son Beau, and remember the words he quoted from the Ecclesiastes in his victory speech this January that there is a ‘Time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow, a time to heal’; and remind his Catholic heart that this is the time to forgive, the time to transcend American distaste toward foreign governments which publicly embrace American foes, and, in the name of humanity, to grant the grace of life saving 600,000 AstraZeneca doses from his nation’s 60 million stockpile, earmarked to be shared with the world to the Lankan people.

And thus ensure that the sins of the State do not visit its helpless citizens.