THE door-to-door vaccination drive in Bulawayo has been a success, as more people continue to embrace inoculation as the best weapon in the fight against Covid-19, Bulawayo provincial medical director, Maphios Siamuchembu, says.
The local authority recently embarked on a door-to-door vaccination campaign targeting the elderly and those staying at home, in an attempt to accelerate the vaccination drive and reach herd immunity.
Siamuchembu told Daily News yesterday that the vaccination campaign had so far paid dividends as more people have been reached.
“The door-to-door vaccination drive has indeed paid dividends. It was worth it as we managed to reach out to a lot of people in the communities who may not have gone to vaccination centres. We had a lot of positive feedback.
“However, we did not get the numbers that we had targeted to get, but nonetheless the drive is going well and we are working. Every dose taken is a plus. We will be reviewing the strategy sometime this month in order to ascertain if we should continue with it or if we should be implementing a new strategy, also bearing in mind that schools would have re-opened and we may need to target the school going age groups,” Siamuchembu said.
He said the decrease in Covid-19 cases being recorded in the country’s second largest city, where the recovery rate is at 95 percent, while new cases have gone down by 53 percent, were signs that the vaccination programme was bearing fruit.
“Generally, the overall number of provincial cases decreased during the week under review, with 47 new cases recorded compared to 101 new cases in the previous week.
“This presents a 53 percent decrease. An average of seven new cases was reported per day, compared to 14 new cases per day the previous week,” Siamuchembu said.
He also said Bulawayo was targeting to vaccinate 504 422 residents, with 295 433 having already received their first dose, while 258 728 have received their second jab.
The numbers translate to 58.6 percent of the eligible population in Bulawayo having received the first Covid-19 vaccines, while 51.3 percent have received their second dose.
Siamuchembu said 7 390 people, translating to 1.465 percent of the eligible population had received the third jab.
He added that the figure was mostly for the high risk population and frontline workers.
