While the vaccines were helping, he said, vaccinated people
needed to keep wearing face masks, sanitising and observing social distancing.
With the Ministry of Health and Child Care pushing
vaccination, progress can be maintained since Zimbabwe was set to take delivery
of another large batch of vaccines this week as the Government steps up efforts
to speed up the vaccination programme.
Said Dr Mangwiro: “The positive cases we are getting are
mostly those who are not vaccinated, and we are finding out that most of them
are asymptomatic. The hotspots are mainly Mashonaland West, Bulawayo,
Manicaland.
“Mass vaccination in border towns had been critical with
low cases in those areas. Fortunately, our border towns like Victoria Falls
where we had our first mass vaccination and the uptake was good. I was talking
to Dr Mamvura, the District Medical Officer for Victoria Falls, and his cases
are quite low, about six. Also Plumtree did a massive campaign to vaccinate,
and so figures are very low.”
Statistics from border towns, Dr Mangwiro said, showed that
most of the new cases were imported, meaning they came from other countries and
not from within.
“You can see that vaccination is an advantage and we
encourage people to get vaccinated.”
Zimbabwe has been vaccinating its citizens using the highly
rated Chinese-made Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines, which have both been granted
emergency use authorisation by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and a
combined 1,7 million doses of the two vaccines has formed the mainstay of the
Zimbabwean vaccination effort.
In addition, India has donated 37 000 doses of Covaxin
while 25 000 doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine were procured by a mining
company.
Research conducted by the Gamaleya National Research Centre
of Epidemiology and Microbiology and the Russian Direct Investment Fund
revealed that the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine showed a 97,6 percent efficacy.
Added Dr Mangwiro: “More vaccines are expected in the
country this coming week and we encourage people to get vaccinated and keep up
the pressure and momentum on vaccination.”
He encouraged those that have already been vaccinated to
continue adhering to the prescribed protocols such as wearing face masks,
staying indoors unless it becomes extremely necessary to go out, washing hands,
sanitisation and maintaining social distance, to minimise chances of them
getting infected.
Zimbabwe introduced a new range of restrictions recently
and the Government encouraged people to adhere to contain the spread of
coronavirus.
“Let us continue to take care, to social distance and
listen to what has been directed by President Mnangagwa, if there is a lockdown
let us listen, if there are restrictions let us listen. We get very worried if
there is business as usual in some areas,” said Dr Mangwiro. Herald
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