Health workers in Zanzibar have begun receiving the first dose of covid-19 vaccine. The Zanzibar government has confirmed that Sinocav doses from China have begun to be released in the first phase while the second phase is expected to take place two weeks from now.
Zanzibar’s Minister of Health, Social Development, Gender, Elderly and Children, Ahmed Mazrui, has said they have started providing the COVID-19 vaccine to Health Workers at Government Hospitals, Abeid Karume Airport and Malindi Port.
For his part, the Secretary of the Ministry of Health Zanzibar, Dr. Omary Dadi Shajak has said; ‘‘ We started vaccinating last week for our health workers, we are giving them the Sinovac vaccine from China which has been approved by the World Health Organization (WHO). We have 6,000 health workers but for now we will start with half of them.
According to Dr. The Shajak vaccine was originally planned to be given to growing up pilgrims to Mecca, but due to the ban on pilgrims from outside Saudi Arabia, the Ministry has decided to use the vaccine for health workers.
The immunization program, however, targets only Zanzibar health workers. Dr. Shajak also added that a joint vaccine with mainland Tanzania will be provided in a special order through the Covax program.
