{"id":30710,"date":"2021-03-23T07:47:24","date_gmt":"2021-03-23T03:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=30710"},"modified":"2021-04-04T07:43:33","modified_gmt":"2021-04-04T03:43:33","slug":"scaling-up-vaccination-a-must","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/scaling-up-vaccination-a-must\/","title":{"rendered":"Scaling Up Vaccination: A Must"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editorial<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The major challenge to countries in the management of the Covid pandemic and its surges and waves has been to \u2018get the trade-offs right between lockdowns, economic damage and the spread of the virus\u2019, as pointed out in an issue of The Economist<\/em> of February 6, 2021. In our local context, this same idea was expressed by economist Eric Ng Ping Cheun in an interview to this paper last week as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018G\u00e9rer un pays, c\u2019est savoir g\u00e9rer les risques, en l\u2019occurrence les risques sanitaires et \u00e9conomiques, en m\u00eame temps. Tout l\u2019art de gouverner, c\u2019est de savoir cr\u00e9er les conditions d\u2019une bonne sant\u00e9 \u00e9conomique tout en faisant respecter en public, dans la discipline, les consignes sanitaires (port du masque, distanciation sociale).<\/span><\/p>\n

Nous devons apprendre \u00e0 vivre avec le coronavirus, sachant que le risque z\u00e9ro n\u2019existe pas. Faute de quoi, l\u2019\u00e9conomie mauricienne, qui n\u2019est d\u00e9j\u00e0 plus r\u00e9siliente, avancera \u00e0 reculons.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, as we have had occasion to point out earlier, experts now coming round to the view that the Covid-19 is going to become a seasonal one like the flu virus and that we will have to live with and adapt to it as we have done for influenza \u2013 except that it is a more complicated matter given the variants that have been emerging.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a report just released by AXYS, it notes that \u2018The Mauritian economy has proven to be relatively resilient running at an estimated -85% of pre-pandemic of levels (an ”-85% economy”) given that the hospitality is effectively shut and consumption has slowed.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

While underlining that \u2018there remain many palpable downside risks for the economy going forwards\u2019 the report points out that \u2018the silver lining is that Mauritius has started its vaccination campaign.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

It continues with \u2018we’ve been better prepared for a confinement this time round. Work Access Permits (WAPs) were delivered within days; those able to work-from-home were likely up and running with less friction; supermarkets, banks and the stock-exchange were only shut for a day; while the hospitality industry’s been effectively shut down for a year. Manufacturers are unlikely to see their exports orders cancelled and logistical disruptions will be smaller thanks to an operational harbour and Air Mauritius maintaining weekly flights to selected destinations.<\/span><\/p>\n

The worst affected will be retail shops, restaurants, ‘snacks’ and cosmetic services. Some might not survive the 2nd one,\u2019 concluding that \u2018on a brighter note, once our borders re-open and when vaccinations reach critical mass, that will surely boost our 85% economy.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

First things first \u2013 we must reach critical mass in vaccination before we open our borders which will help the economy to recover.<\/span><\/p>\n

Based on the demographic profile of Mauritius with a population of 1,379,265 (July 2020 estimate) and an age structure classified as 0-14 years and 15-24 years rather than 0-18 years, one can make a rough estimate that the population of Mauritius above 18 years of age could be one million. Since at least 60% of the population must be vaccinated for the country to be relatively Covid-safe and therefore consider opening of borders, this means that at least 600,000 people need to be vaccinated.<\/span><\/p>\n

100,000 doses of the Covishield vaccine have already been used, the remaining 100,000 having been kept for the second dose to those of the first batch. So that means achieving vaccination in another 500,000 people at the minimum. At the rate of 9000 per day this works out to 55 days \u2013 or 100 days if we want to be safer still by vaccinating all the remaining 900,000.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, in 3 months we can seriously think of opening borders \u2013 provided we can scale up our vaccination campaign, and in light of the Covid situation in the outside world, especially in our export and tourist markets. This implies having the necessary resources, starting with having sufficient doses of vaccine.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Covaxin rollout has already begun. Bharat Biotech, the vaccine’s manufacturer has released results from its phase 3 clinical trials, the reported data on the vaccine from phase 1, 2, and 3 trials involving around 27,000 participants. And the data have shown that it has an efficacy rate of 81%. In India nearly one million people have already received the vaccine, and the vaccine rollout in India is closely monitored by its 34-year-old surveillance programme for monitoring \u2018adverse events\u2019 following immunization.<\/span><\/p>\n

So our priority now should be to vaccinate as many people as possible as soon as possible by working out a new strategy, which should include instilling trust in the population so as to get back to normal with their cooperation. That\u2019s the only viable way forward.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

* Published in print edition on 23 March 2021<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editorial<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33],"tags":[1067,23322,27629,28326,1196,3035,119,36,1756,28325],"class_list":["post-30710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorials","tag-air-mauritius","tag-axys","tag-bharat-biotech","tag-covishield-vaccine","tag-editorial","tag-eric-ng-ping-cheun","tag-mauritius","tag-mauritius-times","tag-the-economist","tag-work-access-permits"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Editorial.jpg?fit=900%2C526&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-7Zk","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}