Every government is hungry for praise and ours is no exception. Media becomes a government's favourite when it does nothing but praise. That, however, does not serve society or its people. The irony is that it does not serve the government either. It deprives it of the essential, useful and necessary feedback that is like the oxygen for a person's health. Yet all that a government cares about is praise and never really appreciates the crucial role that objective criticism plays.

However, there are times when a government, as ours in this case, and its leader, Sheikh Hasina, most appropriately deserve praise, and we do so unreservedly. We in The Daily Star are just as ready to criticise when appropriate as are we ready to praise and congratulate when our government achieves beyond expectation. And in this case, it did. There were legitimate fears about how Bangladesh would fare in the intense global competition for early supply of Covid-19 vaccines. So many countries are still without vaccines with no idea about when they will get their supply. In terms of early availability, Sheikh Hasina's government's performance was extraordinary, deserving our sincerest appreciation.

When we listen to the leaders of Italy, Spain, France and other European Union countries complaining about AstraZeneca's failure to live up to their contractual terms and failing to deliver the required quantity of vaccines on time, we can appreciate more the expeditious action of our government. The European governments have failed to provide timely vaccines in sufficient quantity for the safety and security of their population. Ours have not.

Regardless of whose fault it is, people of Europe will blame their respective governments, and rightly so. We would be blaming ours too if it failed to bring us the vaccine in time. But our story is the exact opposite. Contrary to the press in Europe we have to praise our government and the prime minister -- as nothing big in the country happens without her involvement -- and thank them for such a superb job done. Not only did our vaccine arrive on time -- on the exact day -- but also in the sufficient quantities as agreed. This required advanced planning, timely negotiations, signing deals, making funds available and preparing all the necessary logistics for everything to operate efficiently. So far it has. For all this, the government must be thanked profusely.

The gift of vaccines from India also needs to be lauded as their timely arrival -- four days before our own -- greatly helped to assuage public concerns and reduce the uncertainty of vaccine availability. The location of the vaccine manufacturer -- Serum Institute of India -- being in India and not in any faraway country helped the situation. The constructive bilateral relations between our two countries also played its positive part.

Now, the challenge is to vaccinate our vulnerable citizens and save lives. There are issues of distribution to all the outlying areas, appropriate and hygienic facilities to administer the injections and do the necessary observations for after-effects and attending to patients who may show unforeseen side effects. We need to keep in mind that any mishaps in the process may lead to rumours and negative speculation about the efficacy of the vaccines and reinforce the existing uninformed resistance among a section of the people against the vaccine.

The unusually low level of Covid-19 infections in Bangladesh remains a mystery and a happy one for us. Regardless of what may have caused it, we are grateful that both our infection rate and death numbers continue to remain low. We hope that we continue to be lucky, and now with the efficient delivery of the vaccine by the government we can really see this crisis through.

Once again, we congratulate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her government for an excellent job done so far in providing us with timely vaccines.