Covid-19 vaccination campaign flops

Not out of the woods yet. An international donor community-led Covid-19 plan to vaccinate at least 60 percent of the targeted population by mid this year has failed, swerving the country into a potential breeding ground for new and more transmissible variants of the virus, authorities have warned.

The Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 further fears the slow immunisation, standing at 10.29 percent, undermines the nation’s ability to contain future outbreaks with a fractured social and economic system, the likely ultimate prize.

The task force co-chairperson Wilfred Chalamira Nkhoma said in an interview: “When the virus is infecting many people, we will have to institute control measures and some of them have negative impact on other spheres of life.

“The social system suffers, the economic system suffers and some people go deeper into poverty. So, all these things are some of the consequences we put aside the time we obey.”

The Multilateral Leaders Task Force on Covid-19, led by the heads of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank Group, World Health Organisation and World Trade Organisation devised the vaccination plan after its establishment last year.

The group’s chief objective was to accelerate access to vaccines by scaling up finance and trade solutions, particularly for low and middle-income countries.

The target was to vaccinate at least 40 percent of people in every country by the end of 2021, and at least 60 percent by mid-2022.

“The effort will track, coordinate and advance delivery of Covid-19 vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics, working with governments and partners at the global and local levels to address finance and trade barriers to ensure that vulnerable populations have access to these life-saving tools,” wrote the task force on www.covid19taskforce.com.

However, after the mid 2022 passed in June, statistics on the website show that the country has failed to meet the target as two million people from the targeted 13.8 million have been fully vaccinated representing 10.29 percent.

The data further show that around 13.7 percent of the targeted population has received a single jab. The task force further documents that only 57.29 percent of the 7.2 million delivered doses have been used.

Nkhoma in an interview on Friday blamed the slow uptake on poor awareness strategy, lack of vaccine varieties and deprived distribution system.

He explained that the presidential task force has invented new strategies to improve vaccine uptake, including expanding the distribution network and involvement of chiefs and members of Parliament in awareness initiatives.

Nkhoma said: “The strategies to be adopted are addressing two main areas: to ensure and improve the vaccines supply side. This means that we should have enough vaccines of different varieties so that people with different characteristics will be able to access the vaccines that suit them best.

“The second is to ensure that when the vaccines have arrived, they should be made available at a more decentralised setting because the initial approach certainly for some vaccines like Pfizer was to leave it at more centralised places because they needed special cold chain requirements.

“That is being surmounted by making sure that there are mobile cooler boxes which can keep the vaccines for up to about 28 days. We must also ensure availability of adequate human resources to cover the perimeters of areas where people are living.”

He further stated that they have devised a strategy to increase demand for vaccines amid continued hesitancy.

Said Nkhoma: “When the vaccine came initially, our people were keen to go for it. At the time, the epidemic was so severe. Many people were getting sick and dying. However, when the numbers go down, people relax.

“There was also a lot of misinformation. We were also not able to go deep into the communities to use the traditional leaders who are the owners of  the people especially chiefs, religious leaders and politicians in the constituencies. These will now be taken aboard.”

The co-chairperson further explained that the presidential task force has initiated the introduction of Covid mass immunisation week at district level to drive up uptake.

Meanwhile, Nkhoma has said if people do not heed to calls to take the jab, the country should brace for tough times.

He said: “When you look at the rapid transmission of the last variant that we were dealing with, the Omicron, many people were infected in a short time.

“If we are going to be doing this laissez-faire attitude, at a time the numbers are increasing, then we should know we will be propagating infection.

“We run the risk that we may actually invent in our midst because the more viruses there are, the more the likelihood that you can have mutations. The virus properties change and they become more lethal.”

Neighbouring countries have also not achieved the 60 percent mark, but have moved far much ahead of Malawi.

In Zimbabwe, nearly 30 percent of the targeted population have been fully vaccinated while 41 percent have taken a single dose. Zambia’s fully vaccinated percentage is also at about 30 percent with 39 injected with a single dose, according to the Multilateral Task Force website. Malawi has recorded 87 933 Covid cases with 2 679 deaths but analysts believe the figures could be much higher as testing is not being conducted on a large-scale.