By Rathindra Kuruwita

Developed countries were hoarding close to 4.5 billion doses of Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines and those vaccines would expire soon, Prof.  Neelika Malavige of the Department of Immunology and Molecular Medicine, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, said on Monday delivering the 16th Sujatha Jayawardena Memorial Oration.

Prof. Malavige said that 1.7 billion Pfizer and Moderna doses each and 1.1 billion AstraZeneca vaccines were being hoarded and most of those would be wasted soon.

“These developed nations must share these vaccines at a time when billions of people are vulnerable,” she said.

Commenting on restrictions imposed by Europe and the USA on those vaccinated with Sinopharm, Professor Malavige said that for Europe, Chinese tourists were extremely important and that it would be interesting to see what the Europeans could do once travel restrictions were lifted.

Prof.  Malavige said that countries should exercise ceaseless vigilance when dealing with COVID-19 and learn from the mistakes other nations had made.

“Countries that were congratulating themselves for handling the pandemic well like Vietnam, are seeing a surge. On Sunday (29), there were around 13,000 new cases and over 300 deaths in Vietnam. Everyone makes mistakes, but we need to learn and move forward. It is important to be proactive, not reactive,” she said.

Sri Lanka had hitherto been reactive in dealing with the virus. The authorities and the public took drastic measures when the number of cases and deaths were high, however, overall, there had not been a strategy, she said.

“We had tamashas in April, when we had detected the Alpha variant in the country. We took measures too late and saw a rapid surge.

Then we went into a lockdown and during the lockdown we detected the delta variant in Colombo. What you must realise is that the University of Sri Jayewardenepura does limited number gene sequencing. So if we found one, it’s safe to assume that there are hundreds or even thousands in the community. Then we relaxed restrictions in June, but there are questions as to whether we did this scientifically. We soon saw significant surges and now we are in lockdown again,” she said.

Prof. Malavige said that Sri Lanka needed to plan, anticipate and act swiftly to control the spread of COVID-19. Sri Lanka had a number of experts in modelling in all fields and the government should reach out to experts in all relevant fields and come up with an effective strategy. She said that since it was a social and economic issue as well as a health issue, a multi-disciplinary approach should be taken with expert modelers from sociology and finance consulted.

Prof.  Malavige also spoke of the need for data. It was not hard to collect data and Sri Lanka had many experts in that field.

“Think of dengue. We get outbreaks and when we see outbreaks, we take steps to curb them. We need data to know when and where COVID clusters emerge, allocate resources and control these. We need accurate data to educate the people and win their trust,” she said.

Sri Lanka had good vaccine coverage and that 99% of Sri Lankan children were vaccinated, which was higher than even the most advanced nations.  “This has been achieved by continuous and effective communication. Vaccination is the long term solution for COVID and Sri Lanka needs to have a proper public education program. Vaccination can only be successful by empowering the public and community engagement”, she said.

“In recent years, we see viruses transmitted from animals to humans. As human interactions with wild animals, deforestation and climate change intensified, we will see more such transmissions. Therefore, environmental and animal health too must be considered to protect human health in the future” Prof. Malavige urged.