Staff Writer
President Hage Geingob said people must get vaccinated because the government has procured adequate vaccination stock, and the country has also received large consignments of donated vaccines.
As of 18 February 2022, Nambian has 168 000 doses of Johnson & Johnson and 18 890 doses of Pfizer donated by the United States of America.
The United Kingdom donated the other 60 000 doses of AstraZeneca.
Geingob said such valuable and scarce resources should not be allowed to waste by expiring on our shelves.
“I, therefore, reiterate my call for all eligible Namibians to get vaccinated and for those who have already received initial jabs to get their booster shots to ensure that immunity does not wane, especially as we face the winter months,” he said.
Geingob said this on Tuesday when he briefed the media on the National Response Measures in Windhoek.
The President said the Covid-19 pandemic was evolving, although the World Health Organisation classified it as an endemic disease.
He said in Namibia, the Covid-19 recovery rate was at 97 per cent, with a Case Fatality Rate of 2,5 per cent.
Geingob further said statistics further indicate that on 14 March 2022, the active cases stood at 222.
“As the nation may recall, there was a time during July 2021 when the active cases in the country were much higher, peaking at an all-time high of 27,046 active infections in the country,” he said.
However, he added that the outbreak’s reclassification to endemic should not give us a false sense of security.
According to Geingob, the nation must continue to be vigilant to control the spread and the upsurge in new cases because the magnitude of the challenge is enormous.
He further said Namibians must be ready to mount an effective response and protect the most vulnerable members of the society and bolster the healthcare system’s capacity to respond to new infections.
Geingob said that wearing masks in public places was not mandatory anymore, although people in close settings, such as public transport and indoor public meetings, are encouraged to wear masks.
He said the size of public gatherings had been adjusted from 500 to 1,000 people applicable to all social gatherings defined in the Regulations, including weddings, funerals, church services and sporting events.
Namibia will also require fully vaccinated travellers to produce a negative PCR test result but should present an authentic, valid vaccination card at Points of Entry.
WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY
Health minister Kalumbi Shangula said the window of opportunity offered by the remarkable decline in the number of new Covid-19 infections, hospitalisations and deaths enable the government to fast-track the implementation of different national priority interventions.
Shangula said the pandemic is not yet over despite the 73.1 per cent decrease in confirmed cases in the past few weeks.
He said the number of tests conducted decreased by 19.2 per cent, with a record 73.7 per cent decline in the number of confirmed cases. The positivity ratio significantly reduced to 2.1 per cent, within the WHO recommended positivity ratio of below 5 per cent.
Correspondingly, the minister said that the number of deaths decreased from 174 deaths reported during the preceding 28 days to 19 deaths reported during the 29 days of this dispensation, a decline of 89.1 per cent.
“The number of Covid-19 patients admitted in hospitals also decreased to 22 per day compared to 64 reported during the preceding 28 days. The same is true for the number of Covid-19 patients admitted to Intensive Care Units, which has dropped from 5 to 2 ICU cases by 13 March 2022,” he said.
