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The extension of the Covid-19 vaccination programme to 12-year-olds and the decision to put in teams to get all above 12 in schools vaccinated, plus pushing a lot harder to get their elders protected, will help to make schools significantly safer and ward off a resurgence of Covid-19, especially as the weather starts cooling.
Both the lowering of the age limit for vaccination and the need to get far more people vaccinated were decisions taken by Cabinet on Tuesday, but both were driven by the scientific and medical advice of the medical fraternity and the public health experts.
Zimbabwean politicians in Government do not pretend they are experts in medical matters, so they make sure they do seek expert guidance and then implement the recommendations they receive from the professionals who do know. It is important to stress that while the Government is ready to take the responsibility of leading the battle against Covid-19, it wants to do so in ways that follow the best possible scientific advice and recommendations of local and global professional expertise.
Zimbabwe’s medical fraternity is ready to assist. The decision to open vaccination to lower age groups came after a formal report from a working group of the Paediatric Association of Zimbabwe, the body bringing together all our specialists on child health in both private and public sectors.
The association is to be complimented for both its willingness to do the research and then taking the responsibility for a consensus recommendation rather than handing over piles of raw data.
The decisions to extend the original vaccination programme, first to the over-80s, then to those aged 16 and 17 and now to the 12 to 15-year-olds were not arbitrary decisions, but were the outcome of consensus medical advice from the relevant specialists in each field. The medical professionals, while agreeing that vaccination was the best way of fighting Covid-19 along with other public health measures that limit risk of infection, also obviously wanted to be sure that it was safe.
Once they were convinced vaccination was both effective and totally safe, they gave the Government the green light and the recommendation to move forward. The rest of us need to follow the same approach. When we fall ill, and even fall ill with Covid-19, we trust doctors and even look for the best doctors and medical advice.
But when it comes to preventative measures, like vaccination, a fairly large group suddenly feel that the best advice comes from a bunch of amateurs, and even people who never got as far as “O”Level, who can peddle conspiracy theories and drivel on social media.
Others, and we hope they are the vast majority of the unvaccinated, just do not take Covid-19 very seriously and while they follow masking, sanitising and social distancing rules when they have to will not make any special efforts. So they put off the visit to the local clinic or hospital or other vaccination centre until they have more time.
That this attitude is fairly common tends to be borne out by how people react when there are waves of infection.
During the third, and easily most deadly Delta variant wave, there was a sudden surge in vaccination. In all waves we suddenly see a lot more people being far more particular about masks and being a lot more careful about who they stand next to in bus and shop queues.
We have also seen with the Government insistence that all civil servants are vaccinated that many who were not going to make special effort suddenly finding the time to stand in the queue briefly.
The number of civil servants determined not to be vaccinated is minute and the Government mandate that all should have their jabs or leave the service is not going to create more than a handful of vacancies.
Come the low infection rates between waves and many relax their guard. This is in some ways natural but it makes public health more difficult and opens risks to others. Already infection rates are creeping up daily from the minimum they reached after the fourth Omicron wave, a daily average of 123 new cases on February 10.
By Tuesday this week that rolling average had risen to 302 and while the Government’s public health experts who monitor these trends very closely are not yet warning of a fifth wave, they are concerned. Since there is no known new variant of concern floating around, this creep is a direct result of carelessness. Everyone with professional expertise in the matter consistently and continually advises that Covid-19 can be kept under control and beaten back with a combination of two measures: public health rules that all follow and universal vaccination.
As with so many public health issues it requires everyone to be involved. Vaccination has two major pluses. It reduces significantly the risk of infection, although regrettably does not eliminate it, and perhaps even more importantly it generally reduces sharply the severity of the illness and its symptoms if a vaccinated person is infected.
Around the world the overwhelming majority of those in intensive care and coffins are the unvaccinated while sick vaccinated people normally need little more than a few days of sick leave.
Climate has its effect as well. Our second and fourth waves were in summer, and death rates, although not infection rates, were lower although that is not much comfort for the relatives and friends of those who did die. Our third wave was last winter and that drove up death rates. But even in the present gap between waves we still have deaths. People are still lining up for vaccination, but we are only using a little over 60 000 doses a week, and we have supplies and vaccination teams that can manage almost 10 times as much. The issue is not lack of capacity but lack of people in the queue.
The second measure agreed this week is to intensify the vaccination drive by encouraging a lot more people to come forward. We now have all secondary school children, and that we hope means teams will visit schools.
We know this works and we saw that “O” Level and “A” Level examination candidates, almost all of whom were vaccinated, were able to write papers in the peak of the fourth wave last month with greatly reduced risk.
We also must ensure that far higher percentages of the population who can be vaccinated are vaccinated and there is the urgency of getting a few million done before the cold weather and in any case before the present upwards creep becomes a new wave.
Cabinet, which wants the renewed drive to be national, has among other measures asked the Provincial Ministers of State and Devolution and their teams, who include the heads of medical services in their area, to come up with effective plans to ensure vaccination is available everywhere and that people can be persuaded to come forward. And since this renewed drive must start next month they are expected to come up with something workable very quickly. Other health measures, such as masking and only the vaccinated in bars, need to be enforced.
We might have to live for some time in a world with Covid-19, but there is no reason to die of this disease in that world if we just follow the advice of the professionals.
Online Reporter