“I was vaccinated because it was mandatory at work. I had two options, get vaccinated, or go home. I chose the former,” says Theresa Manongwa,* an employee with TelOne, one of Zimbabwe’s leading Telecommunications company.
By Michael Gwarisa
In July, 2021, TelOne, issued a statement announcing that it would send its unvaccinated staff on forced leave until the country’s COVID-19 situation had subsided. Caught between being sent on forced leave and the prospects of losing her job had the situation persisted, Theresa felt compelled to get her vaccine shots despite the numerous not so pleasant things she had heard about vaccines.
I had heard a lot of stories around vaccines and I wasn’t ready to be part of the experiment. I got really worried when i heard some say the vaccines for COVID-19 cause infertility. As a young woman who was yet to start a family then, I wasn’t ready to take any chances but the situation at work gave me no choice. This was now a bread and butter issue.”
With the COVID-19 risk having diminished of late, Theresa is happy to be still in employment. She is also married and now has a child despite her previous fears that vaccination would render her infertile.
COVID-19 vaccination in Zimbabwe has faced a myriad of challenges. These range from vaccine misinformation and disinformation, lack of information amongst a host of other issues. According to Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC), first dose vaccine coverage for COVID-19 was at 66.7 percent as of October 13, 2023 compared to the previous week of October 6, 2014 where coverage was at 50.3 percent.
Even though Zimbabwe has vaccinated a sizable number of its population against COVID-19, the question remains whether confidence was the basis from which people got vaccines could have played a part in vaccines uptake considering that a number of factors were at play in Zimbabwe. These include vaccine mandates in workplaces, compulsory vaccination to access public places for recreational purposes, study, and business and to travel within and outside the country amongst a host of other issues.
In Zimbabwe, the Community Working Group on Health (CWGH) has been working to raise awareness on COVID-19 vaccination and point communities to care. They have however raised concerns over the general lack of confidence in vaccines in Zimbabwe.
“Because of the information gap at the beginning of the pandemic and lack of sustainable Covid-19 literacy, Zimbabwe has been experiencing the rise of misinformation, disinformation, science denialism, anti-vaxxer sentiments and vaccine hesitancy resulting in low uptake and generally poor vaccine confidence,” said Mr Itai Rusike, the CWGH Executive Director in an interview with HealthTimes.
He added that widespread lack of confidence in the safety and efficacy of vaccines and in the integrity of vaccination procedures and actors in the Covid-19 value chain has been cited by communities as being largely responsible for vaccine hesitancy.
“Confidence in vaccines especially among certain religious groups has been undermined by reports circulating in community of adverse events, including deaths and the confusing fact that a vaccinated person may still get Covid-19 infection.”
World Bank (WB) data projects that only 12 percent of the entire African population had been fully vaccinated against OVID-19 by April 2022. They highlighted that vaccination efforts have been confronted with a series of challenges that have prevented the region from reaching a continental target of 70 percent vaccination coverage. These hurdles include limited access to supply, weak capacity and infrastructure, bottle necks in logistics, vaccines hesitancy, and indifference.
In a bid to measure and map the vaccine confidence in the world, Dr Hiedi Larson founded the Vaccine Confidence project 13 years ago. In 2015, the Vaccine Confidence Project launched the Vaccine Confidence Index to have a global baseline and they have been measuring globally, regionally and frequently in some countries. In 2021, the Vaccine Confidence Project was awarded the MacArthur Award to look at public confidence and a range of issues in the context of COVID-19 and COVID-19 recovery.
The project looked at people’s feelings and their dominant concerns around COVID-19 vaccines and other things. Initially called the Confidence project, the project is now known as the Global Listening Project.
Giving a glimpse of the findings from the Global Listening Project during a virtual Global Media Dialogue that was organised by Internews, Dr Larson said the world was experiencing a drop in vaccine confidence and the fact that millions of people have been vaccinated across the world doesn’t necessarily mean people have confidence in the vaccines.
“We have to be careful whether confidence can be a predictor of vaccine acceptance. It’s not just about confidence, it’s another thing when mandates are involved,” said Dr Larson.
“One of the findings that I was surprised with is how 63 percent of people in Cameroon regretted being vaccinated. 98 percent in Vietnam were relieved. Interestingly, Africa and parts of Asia had the highest amount of doubt at the time of vaccination but then Africa had the highest relief. However, South Asia had the most regret. What this tells us is how volatile emotions are and the importance of paying attending to them and vaccine acceptance does not equal vaccine confidence. That’s one of our big learnings particularly during COVID-19.”
She added that a lot of people from the study indicated that they took the vaccine because they felt they had to and they wanted to be allowed to do certain activities without facing vaccine related restrictions.
“They wanted to go to restaurants, or the pub or to a football match or to travel and the only way they could do that is taking that vaccine. But they indicated they were not going to take another vaccine ever. Those were some of the sentiments, people almost got angry they had to take it. It wasn’t that they felt confident and they really wanted to take it. They took it because they really wanted to be able to do something else.”
She added that there is a strong link between how governments handled the COVID-19 situation and the response to vaccination.
“On the COVID-19 experiences, one of the things we noted is no two countries had the same experience. It was hugely varied and also people’s perceptions of how their governments handled the pandemic was hugely varied.
“The average was 45 percent who thought their country handled the pandemic well. Why does that matter? In scenarios where people felt their government did not handle the COVID-19 well, we found out that it was the biggest predictor of people’s willingness or not to take a vaccine. If they thought the government handled the pandemic well, they were far more likely to accept a COVID Vaccine. We saw that consistently around the world.”
Looking at how the different regions compare in terms of Governments’ response to COVID-19, the study found that Europe and South America and the Americas that were more critical of their governments handling the COVID-19 that the Middle-East, South Asia and Africa.
NB//: Theresa Manongwa* is an alias used to protect the real identity of the interviewee
