DODOMA, Tanzania (PA) – Tanzania’s health ministry says it has no plans to accept COVID-19 vaccines just days after the country’s 60-million-year president voiced doubts about vaccines. without providing evidence.
Health Minister Dorothy Gwajima told a news conference in the capital, Dodoma, on Monday that “the ministry does not intend to receive vaccines for COVID-19.” Any vaccine must be approved by the ministry. It is unclear when vaccines could arrive, although Tanzania is eligible for the global COVAX dose targeting effort in low- and middle-income countries.
The health minister insisted that Tanzania is safe. During a presentation in which she and others did not wear face masks, she encouraged the public to improve hygiene practices, including the use of sanitizers, but also steam inhalation – which was rejected by health experts elsewhere as a way to to kill the coronavirus.
Government chief chemist Fidelice Mafumiko also suggested using herbal medicines to cure COVID-19 without providing evidence.
The Tanzanian government has been widely criticized for its approach to the pandemic. He has not updated his number of coronavirus infections – 509 – since April.
Last week’s head of the World Health Organization called on Tanzania to share its infection data, while the director of the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that “if we do not fight as a team on the continent, we will be condemned.”
President John Magufuli, who long ago claimed that God eliminated COVID-19 in Tanzania, said last week that vaccines for it are “inappropriate” even as the first significant deliveries of vaccines begin to arrive on the African continent.
But Tanzanian authorities, from the Catholic Church to government institutions, are pushing back and telling the public and employees that COVID-19 exists in the country and precautions must be taken.
Although it is difficult to measure the level of virus infections in Tanzania, this week the opposition party ACT Wazalendo announced that party leader Seif Sharif Hamad, vice president of the semi-autonomous island region of Zanzibar, has been treated for COVID-19.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in its latest travel warning from Tanzania, says the country’s COVID-19 level is “very high”. He did not provide details, but urged against any trip to the East African nation.
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