Why the flip-flop on vaccinating university students?

On September 14, after a meeting between relevant education and health officials, students of all public and private universities were given a two-week deadline to register for Covid-19 vaccination, so that in-person classes could be resumed. At the time, we expressed our concern about how the time given was far too little, especially since only 40 percent of the country's university students had been registered by then. Exactly two weeks later, our worries have been confirmed. According to a report in this daily, more than half of tertiary-level students have failed to meet the deadline, which means that less than 10 percent of university students registered themselves for the vaccination during the specified period.

Although the University Grants Commission (UGC) chairman is now arguing that resuming in-person classes will not be a challenge, considering the downward trend of Covid-19 infection rate in recent days, we cannot help but wonder at this consistent—and by now inexcusable—tendency of the authorities announcing ambitious plans, failing to follow them through, and eventually discarding them, instead of trying to adapt and enforce them. In a similar trend, earlier in August, the authorities had also announced that all students would be vaccinated by the end of September, before backing away from that decision as well.

There are still more than 2.43 million students who have not registered for the vaccine, most of them from colleges under the National University. What will happen to them now? Will the authorities stick to their previous stance of only resuming in-person classes once all students have completed their vaccine registration? In that case, will we allow vaccine inequality to take hold of our education system, where only vaccinated students will be allowed to stay in dormitories and attend classes? Or, if classes resume anyway, will the universities with unvaccinated students be able to maintain enough social distance, and follow the health safety guidelines during classes? What will be the new deadline for registration then? Will it face the same fate?

Despite the declining Covid-19 infection rates, we cannot ignore the fact that, according to DGHS data, only 10 percent of the total population of Bangladesh have received both doses of Covid-19 vaccine. Given that the Delta variant is more contagious than the other variants—and can spread even via vaccinated people—now is not the time to let our guards down. The government must ensure that priority groups are vaccinated quickly and in an orderly manner, avoiding a repeat of the chaos that we witnessed during the special vaccination drives in August and earlier this month.