‘Zambia risks not attaining 70pc Covid-19 vaccination by June’

THE country may not attain 70 percent vaccination against Covid-19 by June 2022 because people are still hesitant on the vaccination, the Zambia National Public Health Institute (ZNPHI) has observed.

ZNPHI infectious diseases specialist, Paul Zulu, observed that people were still shunning away from vaccination which should not be the case.

During a virtual media science cafe meeting on keeping the Covid-19 story alive, Dr Zulu said the country currently only vaccinated 40 percent of the population.

Dr Zulu said people needed to be told the need and importance of getting vaccinated as one of the advantages of vaccination was that it protects from multiple variants.

Dr Zulu disclosed that there would be another vaccination campaign starting in the first week of next month and hoped the community would be encouraged to get vaccinated.

He however said the country needed to come to a point at which Covid-19 was under control and would be considered endemic and was here to stay.

“People are very hesitant to talk about Covid as if it has gone away because it keeps going and coming in different waves so we need to come to a point and we all agree that Covid is now under control, we will now define it as endemic meaning a disease that is here to stay,” Dr Zulu said.

And Dr Zulu said there were questions of whether vaccination was a strategy that can work for Africa or should the continent look outside the box.

He said there are countries that were way behind in terms vaccination but did not have significant mobility or mortality as a whole.

He said a lot of countries were doing quite well with vaccinations who had opened up early with the exercise.