“WE pledge that once the development and deployment of a Covid-19 vaccine is completed in China, African countries will be among the first to benefit.”
That promise, commitment – on June 17, 2020 – by China’s President XI Jinping, was made in his keynote speech at the Extraordinary China-Africa Summit on Solidarity Against Covid-19.
And, 13 months down the line, the People’s Republic of China, has remained true to its word.
From that day, Africa, including Zimbabwe, has benefited greatly in the country’s fight against the contagion that has wreaked havoc across the world.
China, working with World Health Organisation and the country’s health authorities, has been carrying out that pledge in a way that respects the will, guidelines and protocols of the various African countries – without politicizing and stigmatizing the global pandemic.
When the first wave of the coronavirus hit Zimbabwe, beginning February 2020, China was quick to provide assistance – including medical support teams, personal protective equipment and vaccines – as Zimbabwe faced the virus.
And among those to get the initial shots in the first phase was President Emmerson Mnangagwa, his top government officials followed by other frontline workers in the essential services sector.
The donations represented more than a cornerstone of China’s effort to bring the global pandemic to an end.
Since those first batches of vaccines were donated and delivered, China has been giving more shipments of medical supplies regularly in response to the needs of the Southern African country to mitigate the risks from Covid-19.
While Zimbabwe has bought some of the vaccines, it has received a significant number as donations from the Asian country beginning with 100 000 vaccines donated by the People’s Liberation Army to the Zimbabwe Defence Force through Beijing’s to Harare, Ambassador Guo Shaochun.
These shipments have increased in the last month – following a sudden surge in infections following after a new highly transmissible variant hit the country.
This has seen Zimbabwe moving to decentralise the vaccination centres to cope with the number of people to be inoculated.
“We have received more than 2,5million doses from China now and more are on the way,” said Vice-President Constantine Chiwenga, who is also minister of health, explaining that since there is no known cure for the virus yet, vaccines were the best safeguards against serious illness requiring hospitalization.
“As cases continue to surge upwards,” the VP emphasized, “it is imperative for everyone to be vaccinated to avoid losing more lives.”
Of course, the numbers alone do not tell the whole story.
The vaccine donations and purchases have been timely and health authorities here are confident the government vaccination roll-out programme will achieve its objective of vaccinating more than 60 percent of the population to achieve herd immunity by year-end.
The country is administering a basket of four vaccines – Sinopharm and Sinovac, both from China while the other two – Sputnik and Covafin – are from Russia and India respectively.
Many medical experts have underlined the need for people to get the jab-especially in the face of the highly contagious Delta variant that has seen a new surge in coronavirus infections.
