COVID-19 vaccine uptake vis-a-vis impending 3rd wave

THE world is in a quandary about the coronavirus, with lots of public health measures being introduced in many countries. However, complacency and defiance have continued to play appalling roles in the calamitous spread of the COVID-19.

The world is now threatened with the third wave of the coronavirus. Surprisingly, the same public health measures are breached, scrapped and re-introduced in a ridiculous cycle that continues to give headaches to authorities.

The wearing of face masks, social distancing, sanitisation have been practised globally and strictness has been associated with a reduced number of cases in many countries.

There are so many diseases that require us to develop herd immunity if such diseases are to go away. Immunity can come from being sick from a certain disease by vaccination.

Vaccination has proved to be effective in containing the so-called killer diseases like measles, polio, pertussis, diphtheria, rotavirus to mention just a few.

Measles required 95% of the population to be vaccinated in order to develop strong immunity against it while polio required at least 80% of children to be vaccinated against it.

While much is not known about COVID-19, vaccinating a small fraction of the population is not only ineffective but also ridiculous.

There have been a lot of myths, conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation surrounding the use of vaccines. This is proving to be very disruptive in the control of COVID-19. The government has ordered the Chinese-made vaccine, Sinopharm, which has been rolled out to the frontliners who unfortunately have shunned the vaccine in large numbers.

On Tuesday, 400 000 more doses of the vaccine arrived in Zimbabwe. The vector vaccines like Sinovac, Sinopharm, AstraZeneca, Sputnik V seem more suitable for low-resourced countries as their administration is a little easier than the messenger RNA vaccines such as Pfizer and Moderna that require extreme temperatures for their storage.

Talk has been loud lately about the emergence of the third wave of the COVID-19. European countries like Italy, Spain and France have already raised red flags about the emergence of the new wave. This is a monstrous moment as people watch another fulminant attack from an unseen creature. With less than 1% of the world population having been vaccinated, there is indeed no protection from the virus. This spells disaster and, therefore, calls for stringent measures that will promote the health of the population.

The virus is an evolving creature with the United Kingdom noticing mutant strains B1.1.7 and B1525 while South Africa had a deadly strain, the 501.V2. Mutation is quite unfortunate as it gives rise to drug resistance, hence further spread of the virus. The following factors are some of the contributors to floundering of the vaccination process:

Misinformation and disinformation

Social media has been awash with inaccurate information pertaining to vaccines. Some netizens have blasted the Chinese vaccines as ineffective and targeted at eliminating the black people.

All this is just social media talk that has to be crushed quickly if we are going to win our war easily.

How many have died from the Chinese vaccine in Zimbabwe? Hong Kong, which has mostly deployed a vaccine from China’s Sinovac Biotech, has reported only six deaths out of the 150 000 inoculated citizens. None of the deaths have been connected to the vaccine though.

Germany recorded about 113 deaths of inoculated patients.

Further investigations did not link the deaths to the vaccines. This, therefore, goes to show the degree of safety of the available vaccines.

Ignorance

Lack of knowledge is hampering progress in inoculation. Many people argue that the vaccines were made hastily. This is false as the first patient, Sandra Lindsay, a United States nurse, was vaccinated on December 15 2020, one year after the virus was detected. In 1957 during the Asian flu pandemic, American microbiologist Maurice Hilleman hastily made a vaccine from May 1957 and by August of the same year, the vaccine was already in use. The pandemic was brought to an end.

The 1968/69 Hong Kong flu, which was caused by H3N2 virus, was suppressed again through a vaccine. This, therefore, calls for more health education to enlighten people about the benefits of vaccination and the possible side effects and how they will be addressed in case they arise.

Lack of advanced advocacy

Advocacy is the act or process of supporting a cause, proposal or policy. The idea of vaccination should be sold to the population and there should be integrated groups of people with specific objectives, resources and skills to sell the idea. Media houses should be in line to support the noble cause and everyone should access the information that will be disseminated.

The COVID-19 campaigns should be done at all levels of the State that include national, provincial, district and village. The more people get vaccinated, the better the immunity developed against the COVID-19.

We have to remain vigilant about COVID-19. Let us abstain from taking advantage of COVID-19. I hear there are some schools that are demanding US$25 for COVID-19 tests from each learner.

So these schools want to do routine rapid tests? The Health and Child Care ministry should take drastic action on such rogue schools.

Keep guard, we need to repel the third wave!