Country faces repercussions of arbitrary, illogical decision to change National Vaccine programme: JVP

Claiming that the country is facing repercussions of the arbitrary and illogical decision to change the National Vaccine programme to vaccinate people over 60-years of age, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) today posed ten questions to the President and Covid Task Force on Covid pandemic. 

Former JVP MP Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa said it was reported that more than 75% of the Covid deaths were among unvaccinated people over 60-years of age and that this was a result of the decision to change the vaccine policy.

“Nine Covid deaths are being reported every hour. Seven out of nine deaths are of people above 60 and six of them are unvaccinated. There had been 4,850 Covid deaths in August and 3,000 out of them are unvaccinated 60-year-old senior citizens. We could have given the Sinopharm vaccine to people over 60 in June after approval by the WHO on May 7. If done so, these deaths could have easily been averted,” he said.

He said the report prepared on January 8 according to the National Vaccine policy to vaccinate people over 60 was changed even without the health authorities' knowledge and added that this arbitrary, illogical decision had resulted in the current devastation.

Dr. Jayatissa also said the current lockdown was not put to better use and added that the Government had not taken steps to increase PCR and RATs to identify the covid patients and isolate them to prevent the spread of the disease.

“The Government should have increased the PCR tests by at least 100,000 during the lockdown. However, an average of lesser than 25,000 PCR tests are being done instead,” he said.

He said when there was a risk of a new Covid variant detected in South Africa which is spreading in the world, the Government decided to invite Indian tourists to visit Sri Lanka.

He said JVP was posing ten questions to the President and the Covid Task Force and urged them to answer those questions so that people could know the real situation.

Dr. Jayatissa said the Covid Task Force should answer as to who took the decision to change the vaccine programme, what action was taken on the NMRA and Expert Vaccine Committee officials who delayed the approval of the Sinopharm vaccine, who involved in using medicines such as Dhammika syrup rather than giving priority to Covid vaccine, who decides on the allocation of vaccine varieties according to the areas, deletion of NMRA data, controversy on the PCR and RAT pricing, removing of health officials from their positions and who decided to allow Indian tourists to visit Sri Lanka amid South African variant and Delta variant spreading in the world.(Ajith Siriwardana)