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Isdore Guvamombe
Assistant Editor
Tomorrow, President Mnangagwa is expected to take his Covid-19 vaccination jab in an event that marks the launch of the second National Vaccination Programme.
The venue is the Victoria Falls, the country’s nerve centre of tourism, and everyone in the town willing to be vaccinated will get the jab.
Vaccination will thereafter, open up the resort town to unlimited tourism activities.
How wonderful after such a long hiatus?
That the President and his deputy, Dr Constantino Chiwenga are leading the fight from the front, shows how serious the Government wants to protect its citizenry.
The Government of Zimbabwe is leaving no stone unturned in the fight against Covid-19 and Zimbabweans in their broad totality should embrace the vaccination programme and make it easy for Government.
It should be understood that the Government is doing its best to save the nation from the pandemic and citizens should play ball.
Of course, our Government has its own detractors, who think anything not from Western Europe is not good.
It is fact not fiction, that over the months, there has been a spirited onslaught on mainstream, social media and little everywhere else to rubbish the Government’s decision to use Chinese vaccine Sinopharm and accept Russian Sputnik V.
Well that is understood, for, Western countries have their defined plinth against our relations with our all weather friends, China and Russia and yet the Chinese and Russian vaccines have proved more effective than Western ones.
The propaganda against Sinopharm and Sputnik V reached fever pitch at some stage, but as we speak everyone is beginning to see how effective they are. Even the New York Times has seen the light.
I was vaccinated myself and I speak from first-hand experience.
I have been following the vaccinations in Europe and we all know how their vaccines have been discredited due to side effects and yet Sinopharm, Sinovac and Sputnik V have proved to be more reliable than the rest.
Many countries have had issues with AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine and Pfizer among others, although the World Health Organisation has approved that they be used for emergency purposes.
Spirited attempts to dismember Sinopharm, Sinovac and Sputnik V have not worked and the Government of Zimbabwe made the right decision since it practiced due diligence before accepting the partaking the vaccines. Sputnik V is yet to arrive while the other two are now in the country.
As a country we have an intelligent servant leadership that leads from the front and I have seen one of the first critics of Sinopharm, my brother Hopewell Chin’ono, made a dramatic about turn from being a non-believer to a believer who partakes.
After arguing with me upon my vaccination, I was shocked that he later changed his mind and got vaccinated. His chicken had come home to roost.
Not that there is anything wrong with a wait and see attitude, but certainly some things can just not be stopped. What is good is good. The Government has done a splendid job.
But Zimbabweans must understand that vaccination is for their own good. The future of Covid-19 containment should not be on lockdowns, but on vaccination.
Suffice to say, vaccination should not trigger mischief and reneging on Government set Covid-19 safety standards such as social distancing and wearing of masks. Those are fundamentals.
Vaccines by their nature prepare your body to fight the disease hence there is a vast difference between those vaccinated and those not. The response of the body is different.
At this stage it might be important to know how the main vaccines chosen by Zimbabwe work.
Sinopharm
In early 2020, the Beijing Institute of Biological Products created an inactivated coronavirus vaccine called BBIBP-CorV. Clinical trials run by the state-owned company Sinopharm showed that it had an efficacy rate of 79 percent.
China approved the vaccine and soon began exporting it to other countries.
BBIBP-CorV works by teaching the immune system to make antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. The antibodies attach to viral proteins, such as the so-called spike proteins that stud its surface.
SINOVAC
CoronaVac works by teaching the immune system to make antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. It works by using killed viral particles to expose the body’s immune system to the virus without risking a serious disease response.
By comparison the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines being developed in the West are mRNA vaccines. This means part of the coronavirus’ genetic code is injected into the body, triggering the body to begin making viral proteins, but not the whole virus, which is enough to train the immune system to attack.
“CoronaVac is a more traditional method (of vaccine) that is successfully used in many well known vaccines like rabies,” Associate Prof Luo Dahai of the Nanyang Technological University told the BBC.
SPUTNIK V
In August 2020, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin surprised the world by approving its first domestically developed Covid-19 vaccine, before phase III clinical trials had even begun.
According to Chris Baraniuk Russia’s first approved vaccine was developed and produced entirely domestically and has a name intentionally invoking the space race of the 1950s.
By the time the World Health Organisation declared Covid-19 a pandemic, in early March 2020, the Gamaleya National Centre of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow was already working on a prototype of Sputnik V, funded by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), the country’s sovereign wealth fund.
Gamaleya researchers used common cold viruses in their vaccine prototype.
Notably, they opted for two different adenovirus vectors (rAd26 and rAd5) delivered separately in a first and second dose, 21 days apart.
Using the same adenovirus for the two doses could lead to the body developing an immune response against the vector and destroying it when the second dose is administered. Two different vectors reduce the chance of this.
To make the vaccine, the adenoviruses are combined with the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which prompts the body to make an immune response to it.
At this stage this is the time to stand by our Government and get vaccinated. Is important for the whole nation to have bodies prepared to fight the virus. That means will not waste a lot of production time getting vaccinated.
Online Reporter