Africa-Press – Zambia. The Ministry of Health has begun winding down on the administration of dose one of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine starting with Lusaka, in order to allow citizens that are due for the second dose to have access and achieve full immunity.
Zambia received the second consignment of 228,000 doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from the COVAX Facility donated by the French government on July 5, 2021.
And Dr. Malama has reiterated that Zambia within this quarter was expecting to receive more vaccines, 100,000 doses of Sinopharm from the People’s Republic of China, 4.4 million doses of Johnson and Johnson through the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT), and an additional 165,600 doses of Johnson and Johnson, as part of dose sharing allocated to Zambia from the American Government through the COVAX mechanism.
Speaking when he visited the vaccination center at Pope Square in Lusaka today, Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary Technical Services Dr. Kennedy Malama assured that the country will be receiving more vaccines soon.
“Things going to plan, in the coming week or so, we will be giving the nation an update…. so far our engagements with our colleagues in Geneva indicate that very soon, we should be receiving these vaccines,” he said.
Dr. Malama called on Zambians not to panic saying that in the coming weeks or months, they would have a choice on which vaccine to opt for. And Zambia in the last 24 hours has recorded the lowest positivity rate since June 2021.
Dr. Kennedy Malama said this is encouraging as there also has been a continued reduction in admissions to hospitals, particularly in Lusaka. “Today we record the lowest positivity of 16% since 20th June 2021 and we will closely monitor the trend in coming weeks. We can only further improve on this with ramped up preventive interventions in the communities.” He said
“We recorded Thirty-One (31) new COVID-19 related deaths in the last 24 hours; 26 of the deaths have been classified as COVID-19 deaths and 5 as COVID-19 associated deaths.” Dr Malama added. Zambia currently has 12,270 active cases, with 11,380 under community management and 890 admitted to COVID-19 isolation facilities.
“We had 146 new admissions in the last 24hours (compared to 141 the previous day). Among those currently admitted, 661 (74%) are on Oxygen therapy and 122 (14%) are in critical condition.” Dr. Malama said.
