Zimbabwe starts vaccinating prisoners

ZIMBABWE has started vaccinating prisoners for Covid-19 under the country's second phase vaccination programme, as the Government continues with its quest to vaccinate more than 60 percent of the population.

Prisoners are among the most vulnerable and last year in July, 43 inmates and 23 prison officers tested positive for the highly infectious respiratory disease in Bulawayo. All of them later recovered. Speaking during a question-and-answer session in parliament last week, Deputy Minister of Health and Child Care Dr John Mangwiro said health officials had already started vaccinating prisoners to ensure that the pandemic is contained in prisons.

"Their vaccination is ongoing and it is something that we now know that all the people who gather in large numbers like in prisons should be vaccinated. So, the programme is ongoing and they are also going to be part of the people who will be vaccinated right now as we go along.

The idea is that we want to minimise the spread of the virus as much as possible, so when such an opportunity has arisen, we need to act upon it and make sure that these people are protected and get their injections. So we will take advantage of any situation where people can be vaccinated because of the circumstances they find themselves in," he said.

Dr Mangwiro said in a situation where prisoners refused to be vaccinated, the Government will try to educate them on the importance of vaccination in order to protect themselves and others. He was responding to a question from MDC-T proportional representation MP Ms Yvonne Musarurwa, who questioned the measures that were in place to ensure prisoners are vaccinated.

She called on the Government to put in place measures which would enable prioritisation of inmates in the Covid-19 vaccination exercise, stating that the daily arrests being made by the police nationwide placed inmates in a high risk of contracting the disease.