Photo: Martin Sanchez on Unsplash
“I encourage everyone in the priority group to get vaccinated. We cannot afford to lose an opportunity to defeat the pandemic,” insisted the mastermind of the Casablanca-based Covid-19 vaccine clinical trials, Kamal Marhoum El Filali, in his statement this week to ECO Inspirations (www.leseco.ma). Meanwhile, according to the government, malevolent spirits, including conspiracy theorists, are invading social networks to preach the “wrong” word. The head of government has recently stepped up to the plate in a furious attempt to dismantle the arguments of the saboteurs who abound on the Internet, trying to nip in the bud conspiracy theories that could create a sense of distrust among the population. El Otmani is not alone in this exercise. Today, it is the turn of the Minister of Health to defend the virtues of the vaccination campaign, which is being announced with great pomp and circumstance.
“The vaccine will not be compulsory, but voluntary”
Khalid Aït Taleb, who announced, at the beginning of the week in Rabat, the implementation of a national vaccination strategy against Covid-19 in all regions of the kingdom, did not content himself with boasting the merits of the operation. In a long national television talk show, he went back over several points that had remained unclear until then in the minds of many Moroccans. To reverse the trend and reassure the 35 million Moroccans who will have to be vaccinated, Khalid Aït Taleb told 2M that “the vaccine will not be compulsory, but voluntary. Individuals will want to participate in the national programme and counter the virus for the good of humanity, because in the future, when they want to travel, this problem will be raised”.
A COVID-19 passport
Still on this register, the minister, who wants to be reassuring, stresses the importance of monitoring the people who have been vaccinated; these will be registered on the electronic lists and will be given a QR code, “because we want Moroccans to be among the first to be vaccinated, given that the whole world will be asking for an immunological passport”. The minister thus reminds us of the need to project ourselves, from now on, into the post-COVID-19 world. For Aït Taleb, “it will not be possible to travel without a Covid passport. This is why the vaccines chosen by Morocco are recognized by the WHO and are part of the COVAX programme which will enable vaccinated Moroccans to travel anywhere in the world”.
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