Vaccination trend for booster: Central Province leads the way

Zeroing on vaccination trends, Dr. Asela Gunawardena said that the best trend for the booster is being seen in the Central Province, with the Colombo district in the Western Province, the Eastern Province and the Northern Province lagging behind as also Kegalle district.

When asked why, he said they “can’t really say why” Colombo has low numbers. However, with a strong mobile vaccination initiative in the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) area, there is some improvement and vaccination has reached close to 30%.

With Kegalle having a low vaccination rate, Dr. Gunawardena was heading there on Friday to take stock as to why and inject some power into the programme.

“We will not give a single dose, if it has expired,” was the DG’s unequivocal response, when asked about concerns of vaccine expiry.

He said that a stock of vaccines expires in June of which there is only a small amount left. The other vaccines expire in July. So no one should have any doubts of expired vaccines being given by the health authorities.

Asked about allegations of issuance of bogus vaccination certificates, he said that the ministry has also heard of these but checks have not yielded any factual information.

“Such issuance of bogus certificates is not possible as when we check the vaccine tracker, we can find out what has been issued. Most probably this allegation is about the small Vaccination Card. We have cross-checked but not seen such a thing,” he said, cautioning people not to be foolish and have a card without getting the jabs.

“By such action, you will not only be endangering yourself in the face of the rapidly spreading virus but also others including your spouse, your children, your parents and society,” he added.