VACCINE ARRIVES, TEACHERS, SECURITY FORCES NEXT IN LINE

SIKHUPHE – Teachers, security forces, truck drivers and shop attendants are next in line to vaccinate.

This was revealed by Minister of Health Lizzie Nkosi yesterday. The ministry received 302 400 doses of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine, which were donated by the Government of the United States of America through the COVAX Facility Dose Sharing Mechanism. The vaccine arrived at 11:05am through the King Mswati III International Airport. Present to receive the vaccine were; the US Ambassador Jeanne Maloney, the Minister of Health, Nkosi, and the Principal Secretary Dr Simon Zwane, among others. The minister said teachers would be vaccinated using their schools’ health programmes and was ready to commence. She said they would be announcing the dates when the vaccine would be administered.

Vaccination

Nkosi also stated that the police had their own clinics and trained doctors who would be driving the vaccination programme. She said all sectors would receive the vaccine as it was enough and were hoping that the private sector would come on board to assist them with the rollout. The minister said the vaccine would cover all essential workers and would be extended to the general population as well. She expressed hope to utilise all the J&J vaccine doses which were received within the next four weeks. According to Nkosi, they were also expecting to receive AstraZeneca doses by the end of the week. “We are happy with the AstraZeneca doses as it has shown to be effective among the elderly people,” she said. She said they were expecting to have obtained about 500 000 doses of AstraZeneca by the end of December. However, she stated that by the end of August, the country would have received around 170 000 doses of AstraZeneca. These doses, she said, would be delivered every week.

According to Nkosi, they were hoping to cover at least 70 per cent of the population, adding that by the end of September, they were expecting to get over 100 000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, which would vaccinate 50 000 people. Meanwhile, the minister said they had learnt that Eswatini already had three variants, the Alpha variant, which was first detected in England, the Beta variant (discovered in South Africa), which was dominating, and the Delta variant. Nkosi said the country started having the Delta variant shortly after it was detected in India around May and June. This, she said, was due to the travelling of people between the country, South Africa and India. “It is, therefore, important to speed up the vaccination process to protect the nation.”

Symptoms

Further, she warned that persons exhibiting flu-like symptoms should not vaccinate until they had recovered. The minister stated that the country was currently in the midst of the third wave, with the numbers increasing on a daily basis and already surpassing those recorded in the second wave. She mentioned that while the case fatality rate did not seem to have increased, they realised that this could change in the coming few weeks as mortality usually lags seven to 14 days to case identification. “These vaccines will help to protect people. Those who get sick will be protected from severe illness. Most importantly, these vaccines will cover nearly 30 per cent of the country’s population which is a significant increase from the current coverage of nearly four per cent,” said Nkosi.

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