The senior Democratic Party (DP) official and deputy in the new parliament has said all the projections lead to the warned danger of the deepening health catastrophe due to the Covid pandemic in Albania.
According to him, the balance sheet of the blow of the virus is grave: 16,000 lives lost; 50 fatalities among doctors; serious health consequences for which no one cares and about 150 million leks spent by citizens and not reimbursed.
“The reasons are what we have said related to the collapsing overall health system, as well as some new factors,” said Shehu, a former health minister under the DP rule, in a post on social networks on Monday.
Shehu said that despite that Albania left the epidemic “free” at a high cost it is far from natural immunity, and cannot even reach it, and at the same time it is far from vaccination immunity. In addition, he said that the low number of injections (vaccination requires two doses) so far is 44.5 per 100 inhabitants, when the world average is 60.3 per 100 inhabitants.
Shehu thought that there is a speculative use in most of the cases of the uncertified Chinese and Russian vaccines, which, according to him, are ineffective against the epidemic and especially against the Delta variant, which already dominates in the country. “This does not only provide immunization, but worse than that – it creates confusion and hides the dangerous reality.”
Against this background, the DP official said a complete strategy must be built although it is too late. He mentioned among many measures the ban on the use of uncertified vaccines, as well as coordination with EU specialists to come to clear conclusions about what will be done with those who have received those ineffective vaccines. He asked if the vaccination of those people would be repeated with two doses or one dose with the most certified vaccines recognized by EMA.
In addition, Shehu called for the start of vaccination of children from the age of 12 and the implementation of the third dose programming. Meanwhile, according to him, it is important to remodel the primary care to strengthen and expand the range of treatment with Covid ambulatory complex and to be ready for the opening of the entire hospital system in the entire country starting from September.
In his view it is needed the liberalization of the laboratories and of the market for the materials of all types of Covid tests, as well as the strengthening of at least one public laboratory for the Delta variant.
“Undoubtedly there are a series of other measures that must be implemented as soon as possible, otherwise the situation may deteriorate again as months ago. But I regret to say that I have no faith that this deaf, dumb, blind government can ever become efficient!” concluded DP’s Shehu. / argumentum.al
