The country launched a countrywide inoculation exercise in
February this year, targeting to achieve herd immunity which is about 60% of
the population.
The vaccine shortage comes at a time when the country is
facing a deadly third wave of COVID-19, as well as the new Indian variant,
which has already been confirmed in Kwekwe.
Investigations by NewsDay at several vaccination centres
throughout the country revealed that Harare and Bulawayo vaccination centres
were experiencing a shortage of the jabs, of either the Chinese Sinopharm,
Sinovac or the Indian Covaxin vaccines.
In Harare, only Wilkins Infectious Diseases Hospital was
administering both the first and second doses yesterday, while centres such as
Parirenyatwa and Sally Mugabe Central hospitals, as well as Mabvuku Polyclinic
had recorded stock-outs.
COVID-19 taskforce chief co-ordinator Agnes Mahomva
confirmed the shortage, adding that government was in the process of
redistributing vaccines from areas with an oversupply.
“We are aware of some centres that are saying they have run
out of vaccines and the ministry is in the process of redistributing the
vaccines from centres with an oversupply of the vaccine as we cannot have some
places with vaccines expiring after we have procured more,” she said.
Bulawayo City Council’s health services director Edwin
Sibanda confirmed the vaccine stock-outs at some centres.
“We are expecting some extra stocks this week as we have
been promised to avert the crisis, but we do not know how many. The second dose
is there, meaning that we cannot increase the number of people vaccinated since
these doses go in pairs,” Sibanda said.
Mpilo Central Hospital acting chief executive officer
Solwayo Ngwenya said it was worrying that the nation was experiencing vaccine
stock-outs when it was under threat of the Indian B16172 variant.
“Actually, we should be having a variety of vaccines
because each of them have different efficacy rates. Once we run out of stock,
we are not going to achieve the 60% herd immunity of the population,” he said.
“We are having a new variant, a very aggressive variant in
our population and with our population behaving like we are doing, this virus
is going to spread like wildfire and we are going to see mass infections.”
However, at places like Mahusekwa Hospital in Marondera,
COVID-19 doses were said to be in abundant supply.
Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Health chairperson
Ruth Labode said the shortage was caused by unequal response to the vaccine
campaign.
“Some provinces have very little vaccine utilisation while
others have used up their allocations. The question is should vaccines be moved
from areas with low uptake to those areas with high uptake,’’ Labode said.
Medical and Dental Private Practitioners of Zimbabwe
Association president Johannes Marisa said the stock-outs were caused by
limited stocks.
“Government in total ordered 600 000 vaccine doses: 400 000
of Sinopharm and 200 000 Sinovac, and so it was actually a limited number. A
lot of people snubbed the vaccination process and it was not very important to
order millions of doses when even frontliners were reluctant to get vaccinated,”
he said.
“I am hopeful and optimistic that government is going to
order more since the uptake has increased in the past few weeks, considering
that World Health Organisation actually approved Sinopharm as an emergency
vaccine for use.”
Senior Hospital Doctors Association president Shingai
Nyaguse said: “It appears the vaccine stocks at hand are running low. It is
understandable that they would reserve stock on hand for those still in need of
a second dose. Most vaccines have shown
that immunity becomes more clinically significant after the second dose. We
would urge the government to rapidly acquire more vaccines as we are in a race
against time to stave off a third COVID-19 wave.” Newsday
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