Vaccine challenges.

THE last few months have seen several countries rolling out vaccination drives against the novel coronavirus, which is a matter of immense relief, but the pandemic still has many twists and turns in store.

Several highly transmissible strains - of the thousands now known to exist - originally detected in the UK, Brazil and South Africa have spread far and wide. Pakistan happens to be one of 92 countries where the UK strain has been detected, making it all the more imperative for vaccines to be made available and for people to get themselves inoculated.

The vaccination campaigns themselves, especially for developing countries with large populations, are a daunting task. Ensuring swift, fair and comprehensive coverage is one challenge; vaccine reluctance is another. As per figures supplied by the Ministry of National Health Services, only 180,000 of approximately 8m senior citizens in Pakistan have registered themselves for inoculation; that adds up to a mere 2.25pc of this demographic.

Curiously, a similar reluctance can be seen among the South Asian communities in the UK as well. And within that segment of the population, Pakistani-origin seniors are the most chary of getting their jabs. A survey in Bradford city found 23pc of Bradford-based Pakistanis older than 80 years refusing to get vaccinated, compared to 14.9pc of Bangladeshis and 6pc of Indians. Among the whites, the refusal rate was 3pc. As in the UK, Pakistan too needs to work harder to overcome the misgivings among the elderly towards the vaccine, given they have the highest fatality rate from Covid-19.

There...