Vacciation is the only way forward: vaccine hesitancy must be addressed

16th Annual Sujata Jayawardena Memorial Oration: Prof Neelika Malavige

We know that right now, Sri Lanka is in a grave situation with many deaths occurring daily, and rising case numbers and hospitals being overwhelmed. Therefore, it is important to plan how to move forward and avoid getting into a similar situation in future, Prof. Neelika Malavige said last week delivering the 16th Sujata Jayawardena Memorial oration virtually to about 1,000 participants virtually.

“It needs to be accepted that COVID-19 is here to stay. Therefore, we need long term strategies to live with COVID-19. Since COVID-19 is already endemic, we have to maintain sustained endemicity,” she said.

Professor Malavige, the Head of the Department of Immunology and Molecular Medicine of the University of Sri Jayawardenapura. Her topic for the oration was “The Covid-19 Pandemic : The way forward through impactful research”.

She stressed that since COVID-19 is here to stay, the only way forward is empowering the public and the community through proper public education by giving them accurate facts, health messages and education which are vital for the public to be responsible for their safety.

“Vaccination is the only strategy forward and vaccine hesitancy must be addressed by public education and addressing their concerns. We need to invest on science and technology to be ready for emerging and re-emerging ‘unseen’ threats, which are the deadliest.”

She further said that the most powerful and resourceful nations have made mistakes and the nations who were leading in controlling COVID-19 are now facing a crisis. Therefore, there are no short-term winners or losers. We need to anticipate outbreaks and act swiftly to avoid very expensive, unnecessary lockdowns.

“We need to learn from our mistakes and from mistakes others have made and be proactive and not reactive. Recommendations regarding the best control strategies, type of restrictions, how soon to lift certain restrictions should be made by working together by a multi-disciplinary team of individuals consisting of epidemiologists, infectious disease specialists, economists, financial experts, immunologists and virologists in order to see the whole picture.”

There have been many pandemics that have occurred throughout the history of the world, notably the ‘black death’ seen in the 13th century and the ‘Spanish flu’ seen between 1918 to 1920. Both these pandemics killed approximately 50 million of the world population. But since 1920, nothing evolved to the magnitude as COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.