Africa-Press – Zambia. Minister of Health Sylvia Masebo has disclosed that government will relaunch the Covid-19 vaccination programme on Thursday, October 7 2021. Ms Masebo said the much-anticipated relaunch of the vaccination campaign, which is expected to serve as a catch-up campaign, is a step closer to the target of achieving 30 per cent of the eligible population vaccinated by December this year.
She told ZANIS in a statement that in the last 24 hours, 1,921 doses of Johnson and Johnson, 1,009 dose one and 748 dose two of AstraZeneca vaccine were administered. The Minister of Health said this brings the cumulative number of doses that have been administered to date to 757,241.
“These are broken down by dose type as follows, 328,179 dose one vaccinations and 429,062 fully vaccinated (of which 254,238 (59%) are the single dose J&J vaccinations),” she stressed.
Ms. Masebo noted stated that following the country’s impressive and consistent low numbers of cases, hospitalisations and deaths recorded recently, government last week took the decision to lift the restrictions put in place at the height of the third wave to protect lives and livelihoods.
“However, let me be quick to stress that the lifting of restrictions is by no means a green card to drop our guard completely,” she warned.
She further said, “the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, is still very much in circulation among us, and therefore, we must bear in mind that the restrictions were lifted in the context of continued adherence to the public health and safety measures, including the five golden rules,” she explained.
And Ms. Masebo has said that in the last 24 hours, the country recorded nine new confirmed Covid-19 cases, out of the 3,073 tests that were conducted. This represents a 0.3 percent overall national positivity.
She stated that the new cases were reported from seven of the ten provinces. The provinces that did not detect any positive cases of Covid-19 from the tests conducted in the last 24 hours are Central, Northern and Southern.
“The breakdown of the new cases and within province positivity are as follows: Central province 0 (0.0%), Copperbelt province 1 (0.3%). Eastern province 1 (0.5%), Luapula province 2 (0.8%, Lusaka province 1 (0.1%), Muchinga province 2 (0.8%), Northern Province 0 (0.0%), North-western province 1 (0.9%), Southern province 0 (0.0%) and Western province 1 (1.2%),” she said.
The minister further explained that the cumulative number of Covid-19 confirmed cases recorded to date now stands at 209,172, with no new deaths recorded in the last 24 hours.
Meanwhile, Ms. Masebo has revealed that government has put in place interventions that will repel diseases such as anthrax, cholera and typhoid which are common during the rain season.
