59 per cent of health professionals yet to be offered Covid-19 vaccine

Around 81 per cent of healthcare professionals in Pakistan are willing to get vaccinated against Covid-19 but 59 per cent of them have not been offered the vaccine, says a joint survey conducted by the Pakistan Islamic Medical Association (PIMA) and Gallup Pakistan.

“Around 89 per cent of surveyed health professionals worked in facilities where they could encounter Covid-19 patients. Of them, 32 per cent have tested positive previously,” said PIMA Central President Dr Khubaib Shahid while announcing the results of the survey.

He said 59 per cent of the health professionals had not been offered vaccination and this ratio was 74 per cent in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Pakistan distributed over 650,000 Sinopharm vaccine doses to the provincial authorities by March 5, 2021, and 249,000 front-line health workers received both the first and second doses by Sunday, according to Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan. In January, Dr Sultan said, 462,000 health workers were registered to get vaccinated.

Sharing details of the survey, PIMA Karachi President Prof Azeemuddin told The News that the survey was organised by PIMA and conducted by the Gallup Pakistan through answers to online queries from 555 respondents from the medical profession.

Dr Azeemuddin said around 84 per cent of the surveyed health professionals considered Covid-19 to be of moderate to serious risk for the population at large.

“As many as 81 per cent of those surveyed were ready to be vaccinated while 19 per cent were not convinced to take [the vaccine]. While 21 per cent were ready to take the first available vaccine, 46 per cent would like to be offered AstraZeneca or Pfizer in the ascending order of preference,” he added.

It emerged from the survey that just over a half of Pakistan’s frontline health workers had so far received a COVID-19 shot since inoculations began last month.

Sinopharm is one of the four vaccines approved for use by Pakistan for health workers and is currently the only vaccine available in the country of 220 million. Of the respondents, 58 per cent said a vaccine developed so quickly could not be guaranteed to be safe.

Bilal Gilani of the Gallup Pakistan said, “If Pfizer or AstraZeneca was offered, there would have been a much higher uptake.” Pfizer is an American company while AstraZeneca is Anglo-Swedish.

He added that doctors did not trust the government recommendations and instead looked on social media for information on the vaccine. “No doctor is refusing to get the vaccine. Some of them are waiting for the Oxford one, AstraZeneca,” an official of the Expanded Program on Immunisation (EPI) told The News on Sunday.