Hundreds of people are being turned away from vaccination centres in Zimbabwe as the country’s supplies of China’s Sinovac vaccine appear to have run out, triggering panic that the government is failing to acquire new stocks.
While government said it had taken delivery of more
medicines in recent weeks, centres in Harare have not had any stocks for nearly
a week and there is growing anger at the failure to communicate acute vaccine
shortages, which are being reported around the country.
In Bulawayo, authorities last week suspended vaccination
programmes due to a lack of vaccines.
At Wilkins Infectious Diseases Hospital in the capital,
Harare, people demanded an explanation from the matron after nurses turned away
dozens of people who had arrived for their second dose of Sinovac.
The hospital, Harare’s leading COVID-19 referral centre, is
now administering only India’s Covaxin jab, the uptake of which remains low
among Zimbabweans.
“We only have Covaxin for the second jab. We do not have
the Sinovac second dose. If you are waiting for the Sinovac second dose, check
towards the end of the week. We are still waiting for deliveries. They
delivered Covaxin yesterday, we hope the Sinovac will come soon,” the matron
said, to jeers from the crowd.
According to government, as of 31 May, 675 678 people in
Zimbabwe had received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 344 400
had received their second.
With a population of 14,6 million, Zimbabwe aims to
vaccinate 10 million people. It received 1,5 million doses from China, while
India donated 35 000 shots of Covaxin.
Many at Wilkins hospital this week were afraid their first
dose would lose effectiveness without the second.
The chief co-ordinator of Zimbabwe’s COVID-19 response,
Agnes Mahomva, said: “We have heard such stories of shortages, but we asked the
Ministry of Health to do an assessment on the ground.
“All clinics got quantities that are proportional to their
size, but some moved vaccines faster than others. So the Ministry of Health is
currently doing the redistribution of vaccines. Any minute from now we should
hear from them.”
Previously a bustling centre vaccinating hundreds of people
daily, Wilkins now operates one inoculation table where Covaxin is being administered.
“We only had the second dose sometime last week. We spend
most of the time sitting, there is nothing to do. If you see such large centres
running dry, it is almost certain that [smaller] polyclinics also do not have
any vaccines,” a nurse said.
Mernard Makotore (50) travelled about 65km from Darwendale,
a town west of Harare, to get his second vaccine.
“I came here very early only to be told at 8am that there
are no vaccines. I was supposed to have come on 20 May, but my mother passed
away, so I could not get the vaccine. We are getting into the cold season and
cases are starting to rise again. Government needs to do something fast,”
Makotore said.
Why did they give us the first dose, if they knew that the
second dose would not be available?” he asked rhetorically.
Claudina Maneni (43) had come with her 70-year-old mother.
“I have been coming here for the past five days and they
are telling me the same story. I came here again at 4am with my elderly mother,
she desperately needs her second dose because of travel. The Minister of
Finance (Mthuli Ncube) assured us that he was going to buy more vaccines but
there is nothing,” Maneni said.
“We hear that vaccines are now being sold in private
practices. This is the corruption that we do not want. Zimbabweans should never
tolerate such incompetence.”
Despite initial scepticism about the Sinopharm and Sinovac
vaccines, Zimbabweans have been commended by their president, Emmerson
Mnangagwa, for overcoming their hesitancy in the past month.
He also gave assurances that more vaccines were on their
way. Experts say government should speed up vaccination as winter may bring
more cases, with fears that a third wave could bring the already precarious
economy to its knees.— Guardian
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