"Covid-19 vaccination fatigue must end"

Munyaradzi Doma

Calls for people to get vaccinated against Covid-19 need to continue as there seems to be vaccination fatigue because some think that the pandemic has since gone and can be forgotten.

President ED Mnangagwa led the initial campaign and was among those vaccinated at the beginning to encourage uptake.

The call was made last Thursday by executive chair of the Community Working Group on Health Maria Chiwera, during a science café on Covid-19 and Immunology, organised by the Health Communicators Forum and the Humanitarian Information Facilitation Centre.

Chiwera said a lot of people have now relaxed, including the health care providers as the calls which were made when the vaccination programme started seem to have died down.

“We need to find out way to encourage more and more people to get vaccinated, because we can see we now have vaccination fatigue.

“It starts with our vaccine providers who are supposed to be immunising us, they are not proactive.

“The service has died out, there is need for accurate information to say why are still vaccinating.

“People need to know, there is need to have motivation amongst the communities,” she said.

Tuesday’s post Cabinet briefing revealed that 6 915 115 first doses, 5 132 220 second doses and 1 691 432 third doses of the Covid-19 vaccines have been administered.

Cumulative cases stood at 264 511, while recoveries were 258 720 and deaths stood at 5 679.

It was added that the provincial task force teams will continue strengthening implantation of all Covid-19 public health and social measures, with focus on the vaccination programme

Zimbabwe introduced its Covid-19 vaccination programme on 22 February 2021 and as the years have gone by, fatigue seems to have crept in.

Chiwera said there are myths which need to be debunked as these have led many people not to get vaccinated.

Chiwera added that the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation has also been a major challenge, hence there is low uptake of the vaccine in communities.

“Looking at the challenges or barriers that led to communities having low uptake of vaccines, one of them is misinformation or disinformation, meaning that information that got to the communities was not clear. “People were not really conversant on what was happening around Covid-19 and the vaccine.

“People were like more informed by social media instead of being informed through authorities that are authentic and believable and the next thing is that they were a lot of myths that were circulating.

“Myths like if you get vaccinated, you may die from the vaccine, you may get very sick from the vaccine, you may be sterile from the vaccine. “Those are some of the myths that were circulating so people didn’t want to take up the vaccine because of that,” added Chiwera.

She reiterated that relevant stakeholders should make sure that the Covid-19 vaccination remains relevant so that more people are protected from the disease.

Chiwera added that their organisation has been using various methods to encourage members of the communities to start taking vaccines.

Nyadzisayi Kakodzi, a City Health Promoter from Chitungwiza echoed similar sentiments saying they have continued to push the vaccination programme as they had also noticed some fatigue.

Chiwera said that fatigue has also been caused by various myths which they have tried to dispel.

“Some people also ended up being vaccinated because of the various restrictions they were encountering.

“But the main issue why some people were not being vaccinated is because they did not have the information, they were not informed so that was the main challenge we faced,” revealed Kakodzi.

In a separate interview, a resident of Chitungwiza, Tafadzwa Chimatira said when the vaccination campaign was launched, a lot of myths circulated which made her shy away till she got the accurate information.

“The myths were a lot such that it was really difficult to just make that decision to get vaccinated because like in my case, I had heard that if get vaccinated, I would have problems conceiving.

“As someone who still wants to have more babies, I really got scared and it took quite a lot of time for me to be convinced that vaccination was good for me.

“Then some people were also alleging that if you take the vaccine, you will be dead in a few months, so for a long time, I stayed away from being vaccinated until I was properly informed and to date I’m only left with getting my booster dose.”