Zimbabwe Negotiating COVID-19 Vaccine Imports With China, Russia, India - Finance Minister

Zimbabwe's government is engaged in talks with Russia, China and India on deliveries of their vaccines against the novel coronavirus, Zimbabwean Minister of Finance and Economic Development Mthuli Ncube said in an interview with The Anchor broadcaster

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 30th January, 2021) Zimbabwe's government is engaged in talks with Russia, China and India on deliveries of their vaccines against the novel coronavirus, Zimbabwean Minister of Finance and Economic Development Mthuli Ncube said in an interview with The Anchor broadcaster.

"We have adequate resources, mobilized adequate resources in our budget to be able to meet the cost of the vaccine. All options are on the table, we are negotiating with China, India and Russia," Ncube said on Friday.

According to the minister, the country has allocated $100 million to procure enough vaccine doses to inoculate 10 million citizens which amount to 60 percent of the population to achieve herd immunity.

"We are having conversations around the COVAX initiative, around the AU [the African Union] initiative which has already sourced 270 million shots of the vaccines and our share is in there," the official added.

To date, the African country has registered 32,952 cases of the coronavirus, including nearly 24,900 recoveries and 1,178 fatalities. In a bid to curb the further spread of the virus, the authorities earlier this week extended quarantine measures and a curfew until February 15.