MANGALURU: Many Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) who have reached Dakshina Kannada from the Gulf countries after receiving their first dose of vaccine, mostly the Chinese vaccine Sinopharm, Pfizer BioNTech or Moderna, are caught in a Catch-22 situation, as the vaccines are not available here for their second dose.
A pending decision on including Covishield in the vaccination certificates of NRIs has now become a headache. But there is no proper forum to resolve all these issues. NRIs say they are helpless as the government has not nominated a deputy chairman for the NRI Forum of Karnataka, to tackle these difficulties.
Mohandas Kamath, an NRI from Kuwait, said many people returned to India after taking the first dose.
“Approximately 2,000 NRIs are stuck here. The flight ban is expected to be lifted in August, and the vaccine issue should be resolved in advance so there is no further delay to fly out. Since visas of many NRIs are expected to expire, the government should intervene. The only forum for NRIs is headless.”
NRI association members have informed the embassy in Kuwait, and are hopeful that the issue will be resolved. There is no issue in Qatar, as Covishield is included in government records, and most of the NRIs there have taken both doses before travelling to India.
Meanwhile, for NRIs from UAE, the issue is different. An NRI working in Dubai said that since UAE has approved Covishield, those having certificates of both doses will not face any issue.
“But there is no clarity on those who have taken the first dose of Covishield in UAE -- whether they should take the second dose in the UAE or here. If second dose is taken here, we are not sure if the Indian certificate for the second dose will be accepted in UAE or not.
”Sarvotham Shetty, president, UAE Kannadigas, said non-approval of Covaxin has become a worry for NRIs waiting to travel to UAE. “However, the authorities are negotiating and trying to resolve the issue,” he said.
CHINESE PRODUCT
Countries which relied on Chinese vaccines -- Chile, Bahrain, and the Seychelles -- are seeing a sudden spike in cases, raising doubts on efficacy
The two frontline Chinese vaccines are BBIP-CorV, developed by Sinopharm, and CoronaVac by SinoVac. Both vaccines are inactivated whole virus vaccines -- they use the actual virus but with its genetic material destroyed
The Sinopharm vaccine was trialled in the UAE, Egypt, and Morocco, and the 3 countries bought millions of doses
The SinoVac shot has a reported efficacy of 51% -- just meeting the WHO threshold of 50%. It was trialled in Indonesia, Brazil, and Chile, and has approval from more than 30 countries
Experts say inactivated vaccines have issues of low durability -- the length of time for which a shot is found to be effective -- and may require up to five doses for optimal protection.