Tanzania has said that it doesn’t have plans of importing Covid-19 vaccines to protect citizens.
The country’s Health Minister Dorothy Gwajima is reported as saying that Tanzania is yet to decide whether or not it wants to import the Covid-19 vaccines.
Tanzania is already reeling under surge in infections and the virus related deaths.
“For now the government has no plans to receive the Covid vaccine being distributed in other countries,” Dr Gwajima said.
President John Magufuli has already warned health officials in his country against acquiring coronavirus vaccines.
Magufuli had said that the vaccines could harm the population, but he didn’t provide any evidence to back that claim.
“The ministry of health should be careful, they should not hurry to try these vaccines without doing research, not every vaccine is important to us, we should be careful. We should not be used as ‘guinea pigs’,” Mr Magufuli said.
He added that “Vaccinations are dangerous. If the white man was able to come up with vaccinations, he should have found a vaccination for Aids, cancer and TB by now.”
President Magufuli who believes in prayers and taking precautions, said “Many countries have lockdown, but in Tanzania there are no plan of lockdown and we’ll never introduce lockdown because our God is alive and he will continue to protects us.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) has in the past raised concerns over the posture of Tanzania in fighting the pandemic.
Tanzania is among a few countries in the world refusing to publish any official data on coronavirus cases. It did so only in May last year.
Source: Africafeeds.com