admin
The people of Victoria Falls clearly take Covid-19 seriously and clearly want to create a very safe environment in their city, with one obvious incentive being that they want to resume their main business, tourism.
The city has become the first centre in Zimbabwe to achieve herd immunity, with 77 percent of the adult population now vaccinated and while there is still a stream of people coming in for their first jab, the medical teams are giving far more second jabs as they finish off the city’s major vaccination programme.
Herd immunity does mean everyone is safe.
Even if everyone was vaccinated there is still with all vaccines the effectiveness rate, around 80 percent for the very safe inactive vaccines that Zimbabwe chose.
That means even among those vaccinated there is a small minority whose body did not generate the antibodies.
But what herd immunity means is that someone who is infected is not likely to meet someone who is not fully immune, and someone who is not fully immune is unlikely to meet someone who is infected.
It still means precautions need to be taken until everyone is sure there are no infected people in the area, something that will not be certain until the rest of Zimbabwe has caught up with its tourist city.
But Victoria Falls has always been fairly fanatical about infection controls, ever since one resident became the first Zimbabwean Covid-19 case, but followed every piece of medical advice and managed to get better and non-infective without infecting a single other person, not even his own family.
His neighbours and fellow city residents followed that excellent example, having seen how well it worked, and put their community first.
Again the incentive was there. Headlines proclaiming a Covid-19 outbreak raging through the city were about the last thing the people needed. And when the Government agreed to call in tourism workers at the start of the second phase, with President Mnangagwa going to the city for his first jab to launch that second phase of the national vaccination programme, the people of the city lined up promptly.
This huge co-operative effort in the city is not only an example to us all, but also allows the city and the tourism businesses that underpin its prosperity to work together to see how the modest re-opening of business already in place can be safely extended.
Government has been fully supportive.
Already air passengers are allowed into Zimbabwe from outside so long as they have a negative PCR test result less than 48-hours-old, and cheating among air travellers is very rare, unlike the problems with car travellers that have forced the Government to maintain bans on passenger traffic by road.
Public health authorities now need to start thinking whether valid vaccination certificates are needed, either as an addition or just by themselves, although perhaps backed up by one of the rapid screening tests just in case the vaccine did not take.
Again cheating with vaccination cards is unlikely among the groups who are paying for an air ticket and hotel accommodation.
At the same time the city and its businesses need to work out how they can build up local tourism safely. Here being on a corner of Zimbabwe, as it were, is a help.
Those flying in from Harare and Bulawayo have to go through all sorts of checks at the airports, and no one who is feeling even slightly ill is going to face a drive of several hours with any equanimity.
But as vaccination rates build up in the rest of Zimbabwe, with the 400 000th first jab going to be given sometime this week, there is a growing potential group of vaccinated visitors who might fancy a brief holiday and break in a vaccinated and safe resort.
Again public health experts will need to be consulted and again full precautions will need to be maintained in Victoria Falls, but opportunities seem to be opening.
The other border towns and the rest of Zimbabwe also need to look at that example of a community called in for vaccination and responding rapidly and fully.
Even the public attitudes must have been on the lines of: “Have you been yet?” Herd immunity is a result of group effort, getting everyone into the “herd”.
Such attitudes are needed among other groups being called in. By now there should not be a staff room at any school with an unvaccinated teacher, and if there is that question of “Have you been yet?” seems a good one to ask.
While boarders can be kept in near quarantine as it were, staff can move off campus and it would be handy if they were all vaccinated when they did. Certainly your average head, and of course the parents, would sleep easier if they were.
Already we have seen one high-priority industrial company, Seed Co, buying enough vaccine off the Government to give all their staff their two free jabs, and medical aid societies are now moving into the programme to arrange free vaccinations for members who are in the groups already called in for vaccination and who have special needs.
Cimas, for example, has started calling in elderly members and offering a very user-friendly vaccination point without steps or kerbs right next to parking spaces for cars and taxis so the public service nurses can give the jabs, with appointments, to old people needing wheelchairs, walking sticks and the like and who cannot sit for long periods in a queue.
Government itself has been opening more vaccination points and is clearly wanting to accelerate the national programme, having brought forward the target date for herd immunity to the end of this year and recently authorising the Treasury to buy another 5 million doses of vaccine to ensure a continuing supply chain for the accelerated programme.
But thanks to Victoria Falls we now know that herd immunity is not some vague target, but a practical programme, achievable if everyone, as their group is called in, responds promptly and enthusiastically. Our newest city has set the pace.
Online Reporter