By Rathindra Kuruwita

Not all doctors face a significant threat of being exposed to SARS-COV-2, President of the College of Medical Laboratory Science (CMLS,) Ravi Kumudesh said yesterday.

Commenting on GMOA’s insistence that their family members need to be given a second dose of AstraZeneca because they too are exposed to danger, Kumudesh said that everyone who had a high risk of being exposed to the virus needed to be inoculated.

“Not all health staff members face the same threat. For example those who work in COVID19 wards or PCR labs need to be vaccinated and their families also need to be vaccinated. Everyone who works in such facilities, from doctors to cleaners, face risks, but what greater risk does a doctor who is not involved in the process have?”

The CMLS President said that if the parents of all doctors were a high risk category, it should have been notified by the ministry from the beginning. “GMOA now states that there are 13,000 family members of doctors in the Western province and that they all need to be given the second jab.”

“How did all of these people get the first vaccine? We have urged the President to look into this. According to the Ministry guidelines, we have to account for even a Paracetamol that we issue, but now not only does the Health Ministry openly admit that something fraudulent has taken place,” he said.

On Monday some relatives of doctors were vaccinated at a doctors’ quarters by people in civilian clothing, the CMLS head said. “This is against the accepted norms of vaccination as there were no officers to officially keep a tab on what’s going on”.