Covid-19 vaccines arrive in Matabeleland and Midlands

Chronicle Reporters
THE three provinces of Matabeleland and the Midlands yesterday took delivery of more than 44 000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine following their arrival on Thursday night from Harare with the vaccination programmes under the first phase set to start on Monday.

The Matabeleland regional Covid-19 vaccination programme will be launched on Monday at the United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH).

The consignments for the four provinces arrived in a Ministry of Health and Child Care truck and were taken to storage facilities.

Bulawayo province received 13 200 doses and they are kept at Bulawayo City Council Khami Pharmacy while Matabeleland North got 8 610. Matabeleland South was allocated 11 000 doses with the Midlands receiving 11 500 vaccines under the first phase.

Teams are on standby to fix emergencies relating to power cuts and functionality of the cold rooms where the vaccines are kept.

Under the first phase of the programme, Government is targeting frontline workers who are at high risk of Covid-19 and these include health workers, ports of entry personnel, Zimbabwe Revenue Authority, Immigration and security health workers.

The country’s vaccination programme started in Harare on Thursday with Vice President Dr Constantino Chiwenga, who is also the Minister of Health and Child Care volunteering to take the first jab.

The Vice President showed up at Wilkins Infectious Diseases Hospital in Harare and took his first dose of the Sinopharm vaccine donated to Zimbabwe by China.

Speaking during the official handover ceremony yesterday at the BCC Khami Pharmacy yesterday, Bulawayo Provincial Affairs Minister Judith Ncube thanked President Mnangagwa for facilitating the donation from China, saying she was confident the vaccines will go a long way in saving lives.

“It’s great pleasure for us as Bulawayo province and we would like to thank his Excellency, the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe, Cde ED Mnangagwa for facilitating the delivery of these vaccines from China. These vaccines will assist in protecting our frontline workers from Covid-19 under this phase,” she said.

Minister Ncube urged members of public to desist from peddling lies about the vaccines using various social media platforms.

“Our Health and Child Care Minister who happens to be Vice-President Chiwenga led by example when he volunteered to take the first jab to boost public confidence in the vaccines. There is need to fight misinformation being circulated on social media about the Sinopharm vaccines,” she said.

“Citizens should be given balanced information and then decide on whether to be vaccinated or not. However, personally I don’t think China would deliberately donate vaccines, which would create problems for us.”
Minister Ncube paid tribute to the frontline health workers for their commitment and risking their lives to save other people’s lives.

“Even after vaccination, we should continue to adhere to the health protocols such as regular washing of hands, maintaining social distance and wearing face mask all the time whenever in public spaces.”

Speaking during the same occasion, Bulawayo city health director Dr Edwin Sibanda said it has been proved that the Sinopharm vaccines were more efficacious than others in circulation.

“When generating a vaccine, the traditional way is that you give someone a weaker form of the disease-causing virus or germ. When you give them that, it makes the body identify it, create antibodies and when it creates antibodies, they are very specific antibodies and some of them will bind to a portion of the virus,” he said.

Dr Sibanda said unlike some vaccines circulating in the market, which target a part of the virus, the Sinopharm vaccines are attenuated targeting the whole virus.

“The coronavirus has spikes and some of the vaccines currently in circulation are actually only targeting the spikes only not the whole virus. If you give the body a whole virus, it will generate antibodies against the spikes and the rest of virus particles not just one particle. In event the virus decides to change its form, which we call mutations, there will still be enough antibodies to attach to other parts of the virus because not all the virus will transform, some part of it will change,” he said.

“It’s not about us being used as guinea pigs as Zimbabweans, but it’s all about trying to save lives with something that we know works. It may not be 100 percent, but we know we can save lives by giving out these medicines before this whole process of registration and licensing is complete.”

Acting Provincial Medical Director for Bulawayo Dr Welcome Mlilo said: “The advantage of this whole attenuated vaccine is that it will pick up any point. That is why we are confident, not only about its safety, but we are fairly confident about its efficacy even to other variants because it is able to pick at least one component of that and its antibodies produced will therefore keep us protected.”

He said the vaccine has gone through two phases and shown to be effective and safe. In terms of the third stage, the data has not yet been availed as it is still undergoing that phase of development.

The first phase of the vaccination in Bulawayo is expected to be complete by March 3.

Matabeleland South Provincial Medical Director Dr Rudo Chikodzore said they received 11 000 of the Sinopharm Covid-19 doses on Thursday night.
She said they are already working on distributing them to the seven administrative districts.

“By end of the day tomorrow we will have reached out to all the districts,” said Dr Chikodzore.
She said contingency plans have been made to make sure the vaccines reach all the target areas on time.