By Loice Takarindwa
Recently, the Times Live from South Africa had an unusual headline, titled “Vaccine tourism: South Africans cross boarder to Zimbabwe for COVID-19 jab”. This caught many citizens by surprise to the extend of developing a huge interest into the media story.
The country authorized the use of four COVID-19 vaccines namely China’s Sinopharm, Sinovac Vaccine, Russia’s Sputnik V and Covaxin from India.
The recent times have seen, some South Africans making strides to cross the boarder for the need of getting vaccinated all in the needed to find a COVID-19 proofing.
This has however stirred debate in the corridors of social media with many people expressing mixed reactions on what has been termed Vaccination Tourism for Zimbabwe.
@sharonmufaro posted: “Today I came across some tourists who came to Zimbabwe specifically to get vaccinated and they are happy to pay for the jab. To say I was amazed is an understatement.”
@Thatorale commented: “Limpopo and Zim are not that far apart. This sounds like a plan.”
@XNdimba tweeted: “Credit where it’s due. You guys clearly got this right. It’s highly politicised in SA — it’s an opposition party playground. They push conspiracies, calling them ‘ideology’.”
Meanwhile , Zimbabwe’s Secretary for Information Ministry Nick Mangwana
has since alleged that Zimbabwe is having a number of foreigners coming to Zimbabwe insearch of the life serving vaccine.
@nickmangwana“Zimbabwe is seeing a boost in vaccine tourism as foreign nationals have started arriving in the country to get vaccinated against Covid-19, for a fee.
With several African countries still facing challenges with slow Covid-19 vaccine rollouts..”
