By Mabinty M. Kamara
The Chairman of the National COVID-19 Response Centre, has noted the need for a sustainable institution that will be responsible to manage all public health emergencies that may emerge in the country.
Dr Amara Jambai made the call at a press conference held at the response centre yesterday to update the media and Civil society groups about the current trend of the coronavirus in the country.
He said it will save the country a lot of money to have a permanent institution set aside for public health emergencies rather than rushing to create an institution in response to a particular health emergency that saw the creation of temporary institutions like NaCOVERC for coronavirus and the National Ebola Response Centre (NERC) established to deal with the deadly virus.
“We are hopeful that never will we again set up an institution just to manage one event. We don’t need to set up a new institution because of a disease. We should have one institution that manages multiple events over time in partnership with the various entities. We have seen that it costs money,” he said.
He said the centre has paid about 82 percent of the debt it owed the health workers. He said when he took over, he realized some chaos in the institution in terms of duplication of names and spent two months sanitizing the pay roll.
He added that he was also mandated to downsize the institution which he has done from one thousand five hundred and four (1,504) with a pay slip of 7.5 billion Leones. “I have brought it down to four hundred and thirty with a pay slip of 3.8 billion and now we have a pay roll of 250 with a pay slip of 1.5 billion. We have moved from 7.5 to 1.5 Leones,” he said, noting that he was able to do this following the trends in other parts of the world and the disease burden.
The chairman noted that effective partnership with the security, media, CSO and other partners helped in the effective response to COVID in the country. He said there are plans to review the testing mechanisms as and when necessary to match international standards.
In his statement, the Vaccine Pillar Lead at the Response centre explained that a lot has been done in terms of vaccination in the country since March 15, 2021, saying that the country currently has five types of vaccines in the country; the Pfizer vaccine, Johnson and Johnson vaccine, Sinopharm, and synovial, and AstraZeneca, saying that the synovial is yet to be introduced.
He said the country has so far received a total of four million eight hundred and twenty-three thousand eight hundred and eighty, (823,880) vaccine doses. “In terms of utilization of these vaccines, as of June 8, two million six hundred and sixteen thousand, and twelve (2,616,012) individuals have received at least one dose of the vaccine of which 46.7% of the target population greater than 12 years and 33.7 % of the total population,” he said.
He added that one million eight hundred and eighty-six thousand nine hundred and nineteen (1,886,919) people are now fully vaccinated, which is 30.8% of the target population which is from age 12 and above.
However, he said there are other districts that are yet to accept the vaccine as expected, he could not state the districts but said that they are still engaging them to accept the vaccine. He spoke of plans to launch the ninth surge of vaccination in the country soon in order to reach their 70% target by December this year.
He said they are working on making the COVID vaccine as routine as any other vaccine that people take at health facilities.
As of yesterday 9th June 2022, the country recorded 7,683 confirmed cases, one new case, one hundred and twenty-five (125) confirmed deaths, 4819 recoveries and 18686 discharged from quarantine.
Copyright © 2022 Politico Online (10/06/22)
