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By Shailendree
Wickrama Adittiya
The Government is awaiting supplies of the Sputnik V vaccine developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology from Russia as well as approval from the National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA) for the Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines developed in China, a top official said yesterday.
According to Principal Advisor to the President and Presidential Task Force for National Deployment and Vaccination Plan for COVID-19 Vaccine Chairman Lalith Weeratunga, discussions were held on Tuesday with the Russian Ambassador to Sri Lanka on the matter. The Government of Russia is keen on first making a donation of Sputnik V vaccines to the country, which President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has requested.
The 500,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneva vaccine Sri Lanka received as a donation from the Government of India on 28 January was also mainly due to a request made by the President.
“We are also awaiting whether the NMRA would give approval for Sinopharm and Sinovac, the two Chinese vaccines. They are being used elsewhere in the world, but we still have not approved it because we are going through certain parameters and criteria,” Weeratunga said, explaining that risks will not be taken with vaccinations.
Delays are thus to be expected with approvals. However, this is for the betterment of the population, he stressed.
In addition to the above vaccines, Sri Lanka is also expecting 500,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines ordered from the Serum Institute of India. The country has placed an order for 1.5 million doses and received the first batch of 500,000 doses on 25 February.
“We were told to pay for 500,000 of the doses at first. This was a request made by them,” Weeratunga said, explaining that payment for the remaining 1 million doses were to be made when receiving them.
Assurance has been given that the second batch of vaccines will be provided within the next two weeks. “Regardless of how many vaccines the Serum Institute manufactures, they cannot send these vaccines to other countries as they please. There is a rule in place in India that prevents this,” Weeratunga said, explaining that an export permit is required by manufactures.
However, he added that India began its vaccine rollout on 16 January and Sri Lanka received the donation of 500,000 doses on 28 January. In addition to this, the country also received 264,000 vaccines manufactured by the Serum Institute of India through the COVAX facility.
The Government is aiming at vaccinated all persons above the age of 30. “We have vaccinated 700,000 odd people, but we have to vaccinate nearly 13 million people twice over,” Weeratunga said, adding that two doses per person are required if using the AstraZeneca vaccine and a single dose is required if using Sputnik V.
While the country is looking at the possibility of a combination of vaccines, Weeratunga said he sees the COVID-19 immunisation program as an extremely important task as the pandemic drastically changed the economy and daily life in the past year. Amidst fears of contracting the virus and spreading to other people, COVID-19 vaccines were developed as a solution to the pandemic.
“The Health Ministry did a preliminary study on this and implemented a program for it. However, we are not a vaccine manufacturing country. We are one that procures them, so the benefit is always to the countries that manufacture vaccines,” Weeratunga explained.
He added that on 28 December 2020, the President appointed a task force to look into COVID-19 vaccination and a month later, on 28 January, the country received its first batch of vaccines. Weeratunga called this a collective victory.
“I admit there are shortcomings but there is constant monitoring on this on different levels, may be at the MOH level, may be at the Ministry level. And there is community monitoring,” he said.
While admitting there is room for improvement, Weeratunga went on to say: “There are concerns among certain citizens. There are also very salutary comments as to how this was conducted.”
