TMID Editorial: The importance of vaccination

People tend to forget very quickly.

Last Monday, the Health Minister expressed concern and disappointment when he noted that the uptake of vaccination offered by the government is quite low.

Replying to a parliamentary question by Labour MP Katya De Giovanni, Minister Jo Etienne Abela said that people receiving Covid and PCV vaccines is considerably lower than the number of people who are receiving the influenza jab.

The government is offering, for free, the three vaccinations in a campaign that will go on for a few more weeks. In his reply, Abela said that the three diseases can all lead to death and he urged everyone, in particular vulnerable people, to be vaccinated.

It is clear that, while the uptake of the influenza vaccine is still popular, fewer people are willing to take the two other jabs.

And yet it was not so long ago that Malta, along with the rest of the world, was seeing people die of Covid-19 every single day, mostly at the time when the vaccine was still unavailable.

We all remember - or should remember - that the height of the pandemic arrived when the contagious Covid-19 virus spread quickly across borders and among people so much so that many countries took precautionary measures to combat the diffusion.

Some went as far as having lockdowns, a situation that we avoided in Malta. Still, the government imposed strict restrictions on social gatherings, and there were long periods of time when working from home had become the norm for employees who could do so. Parties were prohibited, events were cancelled and there was even a time when we could not even meet members of our own family who did not live under the same roof. Shops other than those for essential items were closed, restaurants opened only for delivery services and police officers patrolled the streets to make sure that people who went out for a walk did not gather in groups. We were also obliged to wear masks in public too.

This seems far away now, but it was only two years ago that the restrictions were lifted and we gradually returned to normal life. This was only possible because the vaccination campaign across the world, including Malta, had its positive effects and people could defend themselves against the virus.

The government still issues weekly statistics related to the virus, although these are no longer reported assiduously by the media as they did in the early weeks and months of the pandemic. The total number of cases reported is 123,206 in Malta, with 903 total deaths and 37 active cases this week. But it must be pointed out that, nowadays, fewer and fewer people actually report that they have the virus.

The disease started to be contained when the vaccine was manufactured and the great majority of people were jabbed. And so Minister Abela is right to insist that people should get vaccinated.

It will serve as a protection and, as he has also indicated, it will ease the pressure on burden on health services as fewer people would require hospitalisation if and when they get the virus.