What Chiwenga told Parliament about the coronavirus vaccine roll-out

Information dissemination and advocacy communication and social mobilisation, advocacy meetings and activities to be conducted at all levels. Whilst we do this, we also ask Hon. Members to help in this matter that it is the duty of everyone to make sure that our people are educated.  There will be national vaccination launch to be conducted virtually to rally all stakeholders for COVID-19, social mobilisation done at all levels in order to create demand for the vaccine.  Finally, community mobilisation for vaccination will be conducted via radio, television programmes and announcements; interpersonal communication with target groups, newspaper article and advertisement and social media campaigns, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and bulky SMEs and lastly billboards, banners, posters and board media and crisis communication addressing serious AEFIs.

Let me now come to vaccine safety monitoring and management of AEFIs and injection safety; in partnership with MoHCC-ZEPI, the National Pharmacovigilance & Clinical Trials Committee and MCAZ are the main drivers of vaccine safety surveillance.  Covid-19 vaccine safety surveillance will be guided by already existing MoHCC’s Adverse Events Following Immunisation (AEFI) surveillance guidelines and the WHO COVID-19 vaccines safety surveillance manual.  Safety surveillance for COVID-19 vaccine will be further strengthened through additional:

• Training of national stakeholders and investigation teams.
• Training of national AEFI committee on causality assessment of adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination.

Training and preparation of health care workers on identification, management and reporting of potential cases of anaphylaxis and ensuring availability of comprehensive emergency tray at all vaccination points.  A lot of people might react, just like any other drug.  Some people are given simple stop pain and they react.  Therefore, we have to be prepared to deal with such situations.  That is what is being explained here.

• The trainings will be provided as part of comprehensive COVID-19 vaccine introduction trainings.
• Instituting active surveillance of Adverse Events of Special Interest following COVID-19 vaccination.

Management of waste related to COVID-19 vaccination requires special attention due to the infectious nature of the virus.  Waste generated from COVID-19 vaccination will be according to the country’s existing waste management guidelines for treatment of health waste.  There will be waste segregation at point of generation following existing protocols.  All medical waste will be incinerated either at point of generation if there is a functional incinerator or at some central incineration point in which case transport will be provided to move the waste to the incineration point.

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