Does Ondo have enough?

The news ordinarily should be gladdening: Ondo’s great push at COVID-19 mass vaccination.

It’s about time every government in Nigeria followed that thrust, given the levity with which many Nigerians still hold the virus, even with the advent of the much more transmissible Delta strain.

But does the state have enough vaccines to back up its otherwise laudable push?

“All residents of the state must be vaccinated against the COVID-19 pandemic,” Donald Ojogo,” the Ondo State commissioner for Information announced, “in view of the ongoing efforts of the government to contain the spread of the Delta variant of the virus.”

The Nation of August 31 reported the commissioner saying that was the decision by the state’s  executive council, after its meeting of August 30.  After two weeks, residents of the state would need evidence of COVID-19 vaccination to enter hospitals, churches, mosques, government offices and other public places.

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The Delta strain of COVID-19 has been wreaking havoc all over the world.  The United States under Joe Biden, which thought it had got a hang on the virus, and at a time had rolled back on nose masks, found itself celebrating too soon.

America now buckles under COVID-19, despite having enough vaccines — three separate but equally effective brands: Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson — to protect its citizens.  Latest report, on CNN, talks of 240, 000 children having the virus.

Here, no thanks to Delta, more infections have been recorded too.  So, have more deaths of popular names and celebrities, in the so-called third wave.  Yet, many Nigerians still live in costly denial of the dangerous virus.

So, the Ondo decision is a sound one, to show strict commitment to compelling citizens to buckle up against this killer virus.  But unlike the United States, does Ondo have enough vaccine stock to match that otherwise laudable order?

Besides, two weeks?  And after that, no access to hospitals, without evidence of vaccination?  How sound can that possibly be: that the sick who belong to hospitals can’t access there, because they are unvaccinated?  Isn’t that rather far-fetched?

But apart from that, a two-week window, within which everyone must get the jab — isn’t that an open invite to a crush: a mass gathering (and possible panic) of the unvaccinated, during which the state risks even more infections, given how easily the Delta variant spreads?

For the umpteenth time: does Ondo have enough vaccines to walk its tough talk?

The intention here is excellent.  But the thinking would appear far less so; for it seems rushed.  That is why Ondo State must look at its tactics again.  As it stands, there is very little prospect of everyone getting vaccinated in two weeks.

That is why it must be much more flexible in pushing its goal, while not entirely jettisoning its mass vaccination plan.