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SA Travel Agent Brings Foreigners To Zim For Covid Jabs

2 years agoTue, 29 Jun 2021 12:06:19 GMT
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SA Travel Agent Brings Foreigners To Zim For Covid Jabs

A South African travel agent is reportedly raking hundreds of thousands of rands by bringing South Africans to Zimbabwe for COVID-19 vaccination in a scheme that involves some local government officials and a local private hospital.

The travel agent, The Boyz Travel Merchants, is charging R8 423 per individual for their clients to travel to Harare to get the jabs from a private hospital, HealthPoint, owned by Peter Annesley, reported NewsDay.

The hospital is located in Belgravia, a short distance from Harare’s Central Business District.

It is alleged that clients travel to Harare with an early morning flight, and then take the return flight to South Africa in the afternoon.

Boyz Travel Merchants recently suspended the programme for two weeks due to a shortage of COVID-19 vaccines in Zimbabwe. The agent’s representative Jan Engelbrecht Klitzke was quoted as saying:

Latest Tecno Pop 8 - now available in Pindula.

$94, Cash on Delivery in Harare & Bulawayo.

WhatsApp: 0783 450 793

It was actually put to a stop today (Friday), we have just received communication from the hospital, they say that vaccines are running dry and they have not received sufficient stock, so they are obviously keeping them for local citizens right now.

Klitzke said their programme mainly targeted tourists who wanted to be vaccinated.

A COVID-19 jab at HealthPoint costs US$100 per shot, while Zimbabwe has been buying Sinovac vaccines from China at US$10 a shot.

Last week, the hospital put out a statement that it was suspending the scheme because of low vaccine stocks. The statement read:

Greetings to the HealthPoint community. HealthPoint regrets to be the bearer of bad news, but we have just been advised that the current Sinovac vaccine stocks are running extremely low.

Consequently, first ‘shots’ are being suspended as at end of day tomorrow (Saturday June 26, 2021).

All remaining stock has to be set aside to ensure availability of second shots to those who are already in the HealthPoint system.

HealthPoint is eagerly awaiting additional stocks from government, which were scheduled to arrive in the country last week.

Please ask whoever needs to be vaccinated to come tomorrow, otherwise HealthPoint foresees, subject to logistics, a seven to 14-day break in the HealthPoint vaccination programme. Any inconvenience is sincerely regretted.

HealthPoint did not respond to questions from NewsDay on how they were accessing COVID-19 vaccines and the number of foreigners that they had inoculated so far.

When contacted for comment by the publication, COVID-19 national taskforce chief coordinator Agnes Mahomva referred questions to the Finance ministry, which facilitates the importation of vaccines.

The ministry, however, did not respond to questions from NewsDay.

More: NewsDay

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