As the talks on a vaccine against Covid-19 are in the spotlight around the world, Chief Epidemiologist Dr. Sudath Samaraweera said Sri Lanka cannot keep depending on a vaccine alone considering the time period of availability of the vaccine, the cost and several other factors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Addressing media yesterday, he said in a pandemic of this nature, priority should be given to curb the spread of the virus. He added that the vaccine was only one method of containing the virus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cStill the vaccine is under research and therefore it will take at least another six months to get the vaccine,\u201d Dr Samaraweera said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said though a set of vaccine kits would be given to Sri Lanka as a grant when it is available, the rest of the required vaccine kits would have to be purchased by the government, which could cost a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAccording to the prices available at present, the cost of a vaccine would range between Rs. 1,500 to Rs. 4,500, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Epidemiology Chief also said according to studies conducted so far conducted on the vaccine, immunity would last only for a period of one and half years following the initial dose of the vaccine. Therefore, the vaccine has to be given to a person once every year or more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Furthermore, he said it would create a high demand on the vaccine and no company would be able to meet the demand promptly. \u201cAt the same time, there is possibility that a powerful country would purchase a higher number of vaccine kits creating a dearth of the vaccine,\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn order to prevent this from happening, the World Health Organization has prepared a mechanism to fairly distribute the vaccine kits among countries,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Courtesy: Daily Mirror <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the talks on a vaccine against Covid-19 are in the spotlight around the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}