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Rumbidzayi Zinyuke
Health Reporter
Vaccination is the only way that Zimbabwe and the rest of the world will be able to conquer the Covid-19 pandemic and the effort being made by Government to ensure continuous supply could save millions of citizens in the future.
Already, 12 million Covid-19 vaccine doses have been paid for, making it possible for the country to ramp up the vaccination programme to attain herd immunity by year end.
Of those vaccines that have been purchased, the country has received 6,875 million doses of Sinopharm, Sinovac, Sputnik V and Covaxin vaccines and the remainder will be arriving into Zimbabwe soon.
About 8 million more doses are now needed to ensure that the country has enough to vaccinate the targeted 10 million adults.
However, despite having adequate supply of vaccines, the daily average vaccination figures have been fluctuating despite the continued high demand.
Zimbabweans have called on the government to ensure that all vaccination centres are capacitated with more staff in order to increase the number of people being attended to on a daily basis.
“Some of the council clinics have been overwhelmed and they are only vaccinating a small number of people per day. This means that others have to go back home without getting the shot. If I cannot get the vaccine at my nearest clinic, it then becomes expensive for me to travel to Parirenyatwa or Harare hospital,” said Ms Florence Musiiwa from Kuwadzana.
Mr Shepard Chihota from Granary said the vaccination drive needed to pick up pace for the Government to cover as much ground as possible.
“At one point we had huge numbers of people going to get their jabs, but now I am afraid that if I go to the clinic, I will not get the vaccine. People are spending hours there only for the staff to tell them that the targeted number for that day had been reached,” he said.
By August 1, a total of 1 654 112 people had received their first jab while 779 229 had been fully vaccinated.
Online Reporter