NO SPECIAL REQUEST FROM PRESIDENT, PM YET TO BE INOCULATED AGAINST COVID-19

• President, Prime Minister and parliamentarians also on the waiting list
• They have been placed in the 60-plus age group

BY JAMILA HUSAIN

No special request has been made so far by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa to receive the anti COVID-19 vaccination jabs and they will receive it next month when the government begins vaccinating those above 60 years, the Daily Mirror learns.

Despite Parliament Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena making a request to health authorities to consider vaccinating members of Parliament and Parliamentary staff, after seven MPs and some staff members were infected with the coronavirus last month, there has still been no word from the health authorities if this request will also be granted.

As of today, all citizens will receive the jabs according to their respective groups which they have been divided in, and the President, Prime Minister and parliamentarians are also on the waiting list to be inoculated.
The President and Prime Minister's staff are also yet to receive the vaccines.

"We need to protect the President and Prime Minister but when the time comes we will immunize them. They have been put in the above 60 years age group. Now that we have finished the frontline health workers, we need to consider them as well. But there has been no specific consideration just because they are politicians," a senior health official said. 

"If we give them and the Parliamentarians priority, then an argument will surely break out. However it is a good sign that they are not demanding it using their positions," he added