The country that vaccinated more than half of its population against the coronavirus in a week

Bhutan, one of the least developed countries in the world best known in the West for measuring progress through its unique Gross Internal Happiness Index, is an outlier of immunization. Yesterday, nearly 469,664 of its total population of 735,553 had received a single dose of the vaccine, 85% of its citizens, with excluded children.

Many say that the success is due to the fact that very few people live in Bhutan. But it can also be attributed to its dedicated volunteer citizens known as ‘De-suung’, as well as strong public health planning and a regional geopolitical struggle between New Delhi and Beijing.

Together, the De-suungs were able to deliver vaccines to health facilities, ensure citizens show up for appointments, and educate Bhutanese on Covid-19 protocols, including social distancing and wearing chin straps. His role has been invaluable in a country that had only 37 doctors and 3,000 full-time healthcare workers before the pandemic, Reuters reported.

Bhutan was also able to rely on its vaccination program thanks to its “ cold chain ”, one of his “most precious possessions,” according to Dasho Dechen Wangmo, the country’s health minister. “We reached universal immunization in the 1990s and we have always had great success with vaccines,” he noted.

“The current vaccination builds on existing programs, there were already many systems in place and this facilitated the introduction of a new vaccine through a lot of promotion and planning at the micro level,” he said. he adds.

Additionally, as part of a plan to counter China’s growing influence in the region, the country has received 600,000 free doses of the AstraZeneca / University of Oxford vaccine as a sign of goodwill. Bhutan has also received test kits, personal protective equipment, N95 masks and essential drugs such as acetaminophen from New Delhi.

Bhutan detected its first case of Covid-19 in an American tourist in March 2020, closed its borders immediately (they remain closed to this day) and imposed a mandatory quarantine on residents returning from abroad.