Week 43 - mixed fortunes for Pakistan

 Edited BY


G P Kennedy


Tassy - Karachi, Pakistan



Front line health workers continued to get vaccinated in Pakistan this week.


The rate at which they are being vaccinated is still slow but it is a start.


There is however a less-than-enthusiastic response of some front-line health to be vaccinated against Covid-19. This is troubling as it sows the seeds for further mistrust of vaccines by the general population.


News reports of corrupt individuals using bribery and unscrupulous means to use the vaccines meant for health workers for their own and their family's use have also begun to emerge. 




The Government is aiming to achieve herd immunity by vaccinating a large chunk of the population by the end of the year.


Being a skeptic (and a realist) I think this is highly unlikely.


Today's newspaper spoke of the Health Department trying to launch a fresh process for the recruitment of vaccinators as the previous ones selected had failed their written exams. News like this always tends to alarm me! 

 So far other than the half a million doses provided to us free by China, no other vaccines have been imported as yet.


 Those that will not be able to afford the vaccine will hopefully have access to the free vaccine that has been pledged by the international alliance COVAX, for 20% of Pakistan's population. There is not much news however when that is expected to arrive.



This week I was shocked to find there is a secondary market for used masks! People have been scavenging rubbish dumps and looking for used masks which they then wash and re-sell.


I have now decided that I will cut up all my used surgical masks before disposing of them to prevent them from being reused. 




 In other news, I was a little more social this week and met with a few friends outside my bubble,  in outdoor settings.


There are no restrictions in Pakistan, so restrictions on seeing friends and going out have all been set by me, as I feel unsafe doing so.


This weekend we even attended a small dinner at a friend’s house to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Most of the people there had already had COVID.


I guess I'm being extra cautious as I meet my parents and mother-in-law regularly and don't want to pass anything on to them.


My mother has developed a bad cough and I'm already concerned. She got tested today. I guess the fear and paranoia will remain for a while. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 44 - Mixed messages lead to protests in Turkey

Image
Edited BY G P Kennedy Gul- Aegean Coast, Turkey  The weather was icy cold last week, when I said I can’t take another day, suddenly that feeling of spring was in the air.   According to the Turkish folk calendar, the first Cemre - imagine a meteor fireball passing by up in the sky, warming the air - fell on Feb 19 and 20. There are two more yet to fall, one on Feb 26 and 27 and the last two in March – also will lead to the New Year Nevruz (Nowruz, Iranian).    They say the first Cemre always falls to the air, the second to the water, and the third to the earth.  Nowadays, because of warmer weather, we are able to have coffee in our garden with our neighbors and have a chat. Otherwise, we were overwhelmed with loneliness.  POLITICAL CRAZINESS  Our ordinary lives can be boring but daily politics is the opposite, there was a controversial event almost every day this week.   This country will make all of us mentally sick. It is ...
Read more

Week 49 - Simon says, 'Count your blessings my fellow Aussies'

Image
Edited BY G P Kennedy Simon - Perth, WA   Hi everyone, hope all is well wherever you are.  So here we are at the end of March in Western Australia, which means over 12 months of the Pandemic.   Across all of the country, the vaccines are being slowly rolled out but we are not hitting our intended targets.   This seems to be a combination of lack of supply and the doses being given by GP’s rather than at vaccination centers. I guess the only thing that stops this from being a real concern is the size of our case numbers.   The vast majority of our small number of cases is from returned overseas travelers who are put in quarantine anyway.   This week sees a small outbreak in Queensland with some community transmission. This has led to a snap three-day lockdown to try and contain it and perform contact tracing.  Going forward it looks like this will happen fairly frequently. We have demonstrated that these short and sharp lockdowns seem...
Read more

Week 15 - Wednesday in Milan explores the 'new normal' for Ellie

Image
Edited BY G P Kennedy Ellie - Milan, Italy    “How are y'all doing?” a friend from Texas asked me recently. I am happy to report that the contagion rate in Italy have been mostly down. Daily rates of new infections have been around 150 for the country.    I have the feeling, though, that this is due not only to scared people who mostly stick to their masks and distancing, but of the possibility to do things outdoors, which is what helps with holding new infections down. There are many unwelcome signs for change, though. For example, hope for getting rid of plastics, and its dispersal in the environment, is definitely given up.    Now that all coffee shops, company cafeterias and restaurants that hope to have clients indoors are required to outfit their spaces with distancing partitions, plastic has drastically increased. But it has also started causing some awkward moments.    I met with a friend for a coffee recently, our first get together after...
Read more