Chinese Covid-19 vaccines ready

GOVERNMENT will this week roll out the Sinopharm vaccine from China in some districts in addition to the AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson vaccines that are currently being administered.

Ministry of Health Permanent secretary for Technical Services, Kennedy Malama, said the country was commodity secure as far as vaccines were concerned and would continue to acquire additional doses.

Dr Malama encouraged the public to consider being vaccinated before the anticipated fourth wave at the end of this year into early next year.

He said in the last 24 hours officers administered 63 dose 1 AstraZeneca, 185 dose 2 AstraZeneca and 1,293 doses of Johnson and Johnson.

‘’The cumulative vaccinations broken down by dose and vaccine type are as follows 309,595 Dose 1 vaccinations (302,696 AstraZeneca and 6,899 Sinopharm) and 248,712 fully vaccinated [i.e. 133,862 Johnson and Johnson, 108,514 Dose 2 AstraZeneca (36 per cent of those that received dose 1 and 6,336 Dose 2 Sinopharm (92 per cent of those that received dose 1),’’ he said.

Dr Malama said officers had utilised a cumulative number of 558,307 doses out of the 977,600 received in the country so far.

He said the country recorded three Covid-19 deaths in the last 24 hours from Copperbelt, Eastern, and North-western provinces bringing the cumulative number of Covid-19 related deaths recorded to date to 3,586 classified as 2,690 Covid-19 deaths and 896 Covid-19 associated deaths.

Dr Malama said in the last 24 hours the country recorded 130 Covid-19 cases out of 3,777 tests with a positivity of three percent.