HARARE, Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe has received
its first COVID-19 vaccines with the arrival early Monday of an Air Zimbabwe
jet carrying 200,000 Sinopharm doses from China.
It is one of China’s first shipments of vaccines to Africa, after deliveries to Egypt and Equatorial Guinea.
The first Sinopharm vaccines are a donation
from China to the southern African country. President Emmerson Mnanagagwa’s
government has purchased an additional 600,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine
that are expected to arrive early next month, according to the state media.
Zimbabweán Vice President Constantino Chiwenga
was at the Harare airport for the arrival of the vaccines.
“It has not been lost on us that in times of
need China’s response has been swift,” he said, describing China’s donation as
“yet another demonstration of the long bond of friendship and solidarity.”
China’s ambassador to Zimbabwe Guo Shaochun
said that Zimbabwe is one of the first of 58 countries to receive donations of
the Sinopharm vaccine.
“Zimbabwe is our brother so the supply of
vaccines to Zimbabwe is not a problem,” he said.
Zimbabwe’s health professionals and immigration
agents working at border posts will get first priority for the vaccines,
according to a government rollout plan.
The Chinese vaccines are just the start of the
millions needed for Zimbabwe to vaccinate 10 million people, representing 60%
of the country’s population, to achieve herd immunity, say health officials.
Zimbabwe “has also submitted its expression of
interest” to be part of an initiative by the African Union to bulk buy vaccines
for the continent, Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa said last week.
The government says it has budgeted $100
million for vaccines and local businesses have also been asked to donate to the
effort.
Since 2003 Zimbabwe has looked to China, and
also Russia, for assistance after falling out with Western countries that
imposed sanctions in response to allegations of human rights abuses and
vote-rigging by then-president Robert Mugabe, who lost power in 2017 and died
in 2019.
Mugabe’s successor, Mnangagwa, has continued
close ties with China and Russia as Western countries maintain sanctions,
charging that he is as repressive as his predecessor.
Vaccination campaigns are just starting to be
launched across Africa, with jabs being given in only a few of the continent’s
54 countries, with a total population of 1.3 billion. A massive campaign is
required to vaccinate an estimated 680 million people to achieve population
immunity, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Experts expect vaccines to start arriving on the continent in higher quantities
later this year and next year.
Zimbabwe, like many other African countries,
initially recorded low numbers of COVID-19 but has recently experienced a spike
in cases.
There are fears that a new, more infectious
variant of the virus came to the country when scores of thousands of
Zimbabweans living in South Africa returned home for the holiday season.
Zimbabwe has reported 35,104 cases, including
1,398 deaths, on Feb. 14, up from the slightly more than 10,000 cases and 277
deaths at the beginning of December. The country’s once-robust public health
system has deteriorated along with the economy over the past two decades.
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