By MARVELLOUS SAKALA
ALL Covid-19 vaccines are authorised or approved by regulatory experts and are recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and various international disease control and prevention institutions.
So without further ado, the answer to the question “how safe are vaccines?” is – they are very safe and also very good at preventing serious or fatal cases of Covid-19.
According to Covid-19 vaccines world vaccination data, more than 4.29 billion people worldwide have received a dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, equal to approximately 55.9 percent of the world population.
According to the statistics provided, half of the global population has been vaccinated but only about 10 percent of the African population has been vaccinated compared to 64 percent of the North American and 62 percent of the European populations.
The reason why Africa has less vaccinated people is because Western nations kept most of the global vaccine supply for themselves. African countries were denied access to doses or could not afford them.
However in the recent months, vaccines have started to flow into Africa and the new challenge is how to rapidly scale up vaccinations.
Zambia in particular has so far not done well in scaling up vaccinations, only 3.9 percent of its total population is fully vaccinated and this is partly because there is too much Covid-19 vaccine misinformation.
We now live in an era where fake news spreads faster than facts due to social media. Every day, we are strafed with successions of dodgy cures, unsubstantiated theories and direct anti-vaccination lies.
Zambians are endangered by misinformation about the Covid-19 and promotion of false treatments on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp.
Since the coronavirus cases were first recorded in Zambia in March of 2020, Zambians have been targeted by an unprecedented level of misinformation about the pandemic.
Some unscrupulous individuals have promoted false and even harmful products such as “kachasu” (an illegal distilled strong beverage) as treatment and have also spread lies disputing the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.
By feeding Zambians lies about the Coronavirus, vaccines, and treatments, these unscrupulous individuals are making it harder to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate sources of health information and most worryingly, they are making it harder for us to know how to protect ourselves and loved ones.
At global level, the WHO has put in stringent efforts and measures to debunk Covid-19 myths and misinformation on social media such as designing and publicising shareable infographics while at local level nothing much is being done by Government in this regard.
In communities, the Covid-19 vaccine misinformation and fake news is escalating at alarming levels and regrettably nothing much is being done to debunk it.
The intensity and magnitude of hearsay that the vaccine is the “mark of the beast 666” is frightening and this calls for massive sensitisation. Government has a huge task of ensuring that citizens are educated and sensitised about the safety of vaccines and the importance of taking them.
The word of scripture found in the Book of Hosea tells that God’s people perish because of lack of knowledge and true to the word of scripture, many more people risk dying from the deadly virus because there is not much knowledge and information about the virus.
As global citizens, we are at war with the virus and to overcome it we must all get vaccinated to stop it from mutating into new variants. The Covid-19 vaccine is our only reliable ammunition we have to use against the virus and it is no different to other vaccines we have had such as the polio, measles and influenza vaccines. The Covid-19 vaccine is not the first vaccine nor will it be the last.
Let us all get vaccinated because the vaccine is safe and good for us and our loved ones. No one is trying to kill us using the vaccine, as a matter of fact the opposite is actually true.
If you are not yet vaccinated please do so and help end Covid-19 so that life can get back to normal. Covid-19 vaccines are very safe, don’t risk your life by listening to false conspiracy theories telling you not to get vaccinated.
Author
