To boost and improve a vaccination campaign already decelerated by vaccine shortages in the country, Zimbabwe, on Thursday received 2 million COVID-19 vaccines from China’s Sinovac.
Zimbabwe enforced dusk to dawn curfew and restricted the movement of people on June 29 to curb the infections, which have increased by 24% to 60,227.
Zimbabwe has only registered vaccines from China, India, and Russia and not from Western countries. The three countries have made donations to Zimbabwe.
On Thursday, the shipment to Zimbabwe brought the total number of vaccines purchased and donated to 4.2 million, plus the 500,000 doses that arrived last week from China.
The Finance Minister, Mthuli Ncube said that $40 million had been spent so far by Zimbabwe on vaccines.
The Deputy Minister of Health, John Mangwiro disclosed that the vaccines that arrived last week had already been used.
He also added that by the end of July, another 3.5 million doses would have been received by Zimbabwe. The southern country also plans to get 1.5 million vaccines monthly from August.
While receiving the vaccines at the country’s main airport, John Mangwiro said “the arrival of this 2 million (doses) will see the consumption and the rate of vaccination going into top gear,”
Over 800,000 people have received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, this is far from the Government’s targets of 10 million people by December.
At first, Zimbabweans were unwilling to be vaccinated but yielded as cases rise in the past two weeks, a lot of people looked for vaccines at the country’s two largest cities but they had run out.
As of Thursday, 542 people were hospitalized, more than double the figure two weeks ago.