Deputy Minister says third booster vaccine jabs still being assessed

Health and Child Care Deputy Minister, Dr John Mangwiro told Parliament’s question and answer session on Wednesday that Zimbabwe has begun assessing the feasibility of administering Covid-19 vaccine booster shots.

Mangwiro was responding to Norton legislator Temba Mliswa’s question pertaining to the use of the third jabs which are being considered as boosters.

“My supplementary question is; may the Hon. Deputy Minister educate us on the third jabs which is being said is a booster. How necessary is it and are we going to get to the third jab? Has the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development procured the third jab?” Mliswa asked.

In response, Mangwiro acknowledged that some countries had already embraced the vaccine boosters, adding Zimbabwe was still assessing their usefulness.

“Madam Speaker. I said about the third jab, in other countries or anywhere else, it is a scientifically reached conclusion that people go through forms of investigations and authentication and making sure we are going in the right direction and when to give these.

“So what we are doing as a country, we are looking at those people who got their jabs much earlier to see how much of the antibodies that we provoked by giving the first jabs is still in their immunity.

“Their humoral immunity is something that we are still assessing to check whether we should give the third jab now or we can wait a bit. So we are doing those studies and as a nation that follows science, once we are satisfied that this is the time, we go ahead and give it out.

“So people must just be a bit patient while we go through the motion of making sure that we are giving the third jab vaccine at the correct time to the correct time gap and timelines,” he said.

In the United States (US), booster vaccine doses are now authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for certain people. Nehanda Radio