By Lloyd Takawira
The European Union has announced that Zimbabwe is set to receive 1 million Covid-19 vaccine doses under COVAX global scheme.
In a statement on its official Twitter account the European Union announced that under its ambitious COVAX global scheme , Zimbabwe will soon receive 1,152 million doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.
The European Union embassy in Harare twitted “Fabulous to see that the COVAX rollout has begun in Africa! Zimbabwe will also very soon get 1,152 million doses under the COVAX scheme, to which EU is the biggest contributor”.
The European Union said that under the COVAX global scheme it seeks to deliver more than two billion doses to developing countries with Ghana on Wednesday historically becoming the first African country to receive 600,000 AstraZeneca doses under the initiative COVAX global scheme.
The COVAX global scheme is an initiative which is being frontend by the EU, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Gavi Vaccines Alliance, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.
Under the COVAX global scheme the European Union is the biggest contributor with a whopping 1 billion Euros towards the COVAX initiative, (CEPI) having been injected so far.
It remains to be seen how the program will pen out after heavy criticism from some quarters that the COVAX global scheme with its AstraZaneca doses might not be effective in Zimbabwe.
With a 61% infections of the highly-contagious 501Y.V2 variant which was discovered in South Africa and forced the stop of administering of the AstraZeneca vaccine after some studies showed it was less effective against the South African variant.
Zimbabwe has so far gotten a paltry 20000 doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine .
