By ZBC Reporter
The government has been commended for coming up with a vaccination programme at a time when Zimbabwe has 24 Covid-19 variants.
A Genomic sequencing survey for the period September to January conducted by the Ministry of Health and Child Care showed that the country has 24 Covid-19 variants, with the most dominant one being the South African variant followed by the Brazil, Chinese and the UK variants.
Director Laboratory services in the Ministry of Health and Child Care Dr Raiva Simbi explains some of the major characteristics of the South African variant.
“This variant is highly infectious though there is no severity, we should be expecting high levels of infection so the onus is thus on us to adhere to laid down regulations and observe social distancing, sanitisation and masking up.”
Dr Simbi also commended the government for swiftly coming up with a Covid-19 vaccine programme.
“It takes a lot of time to come up with a vaccine even with known diseases but as you know Covid-19 is not giving us time. What I can tell you is that vaccines are produced depending on the structure and characteristics of the virus and there is no way you can have a vaccine that is specific for a variant because for now there are more than hundreds of circulating variants so you can’t have a vaccine that is specific for a specific variant so the best way is to get a vaccination roll out programme to curb the pandemic.”
Last night, the country recorded 108 new Covid-19 cases, bringing the total number of cases to 35 thousand 423. There were 31 thousand 615 recoveries and one thousand 418 deaths.