Vaccination nears million mark

Emmanuel Kafe

CLOSE to a million Zimbabweans have received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, with the country inching closer to marking a key milestone towards achieving national herd immunity by year-end.

A total number of 656 630 people had received their first dose of the vaccine as at Friday while 320 166 had been administered the second dose.

Zimbabwe currently leads all of mainland southern Africa in terms of procuring and administering vaccines.

The number of people looking to be vaccinated has dramatically increased with the onset of the winter season and the recent granting of authorisation for Sinopharm — one of the vaccines being used in the country — by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Chief Co-ordinator of the National Response to the Covid-19 pandemic in the Office of the President and Cabinet, Dr Agnes Mahomva, credited the increasing vaccine uptake to Government’s strategic decision making.

“We are very proactive in terms of the vaccination drive, always guided and following science.

“Way back in February we had already started using a variety of vaccines that had been looked into by our own scientists.

“And when the World Health Organisation approved some of the vaccines three months later, we had already followed science using a basket of vaccines that had gone through verification by our own scientists.

“As you are aware we are leading in the region in terms of vaccination and procurement and we continue to push for more procurement of vaccines so that our people are vaccinated,” she said.

Dr Mahomva said Government had since activated its health emergency preventative systems to arrest the spread of the B.1. 617 variant, which was first detected in India, in the country.

Kwekwe district was recently put under a two-week local lockdown to contain the spread of the new variant after a man who recently returned from India died from Covid-19.

Zimbabwe will soon take delivery of another batch of 500 000 Sinopharm vaccines from China, further boosting the national Covid-19 vaccination programme. The country is targeting to inoculate 10 million people in order to attain herd immunity.