Booster shot campaign is timely

We believe that the government's Covid-19 booster shot campaign, which started on Sunday, could not have come at a better time. With the presence of the newest variant of the coronavirus, Omicron, detected in the country last week, now is the ideal time for us to ramp up our existing vaccination drive as well as further strengthen the immunity of vaccinated citizens with booster shots. According to reports by this daily, the government currently plans to use Pfizer shots on people aged above 60 years and frontliners, and the programme is supposed to expand nationwide soon.

Though this promptness of action makes us feel more optimistic about our fight against the Omicron variant—which is said to be twice as invasive as its predecessor, Delta—we do hope that the mistakes from previous vaccination campaigns will not be repeated. Often in the past, people waited in crowded queues for hours, only to find out that the centre had run out of vaccine doses. Although the health minister recently reassured us that there were enough vaccine shots in stock and that more were arriving next month, we hope the supply of doses will be consistent for at least a few months at a time, so that we don't find ourselves in a bind again.

It is also important that the regular Covid vaccination programme is not disrupted by the booster shot campaign. Only 25.89 percent of the country's population has received both doses of the vaccine so far, and given the speed at which the new variants of the virus emerge, the authorities certainly need to do better in terms of making sure that more people receive their jabs.

As such, we urge the authorities concerned to expand the booster shot campaign to the rest of the population as quickly and efficiently as possible, while also ensuring that the regular vaccination drive does not lose its momentum. In addition to this, the general public needs to be remotivated to practise simple safety measures such as frequent handwashing, wearing masks in public, and socially distancing. It is also crucial to ensure that the health sector is ready to handle any extreme surges of Covid cases, as we don't want to see a repeat of the first two waves of the pandemic in our country.