The country will start administering doses this week, said President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa in his official Twitter profile.
“The first batch of vaccines for Zimbabwe has been successfully delivered. We started vaccinating Zimbabweans this week! The sooner our country is protected from this virus, the faster Zimbabwe’s economy can flourish,” he said.
The country’s Ministry of Health tweeted on Sunday that the 200,000 doses were donated by China.
Another 600,000 doses from China are expected to arrive in early March, Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa said last week. It is not clear how much the Southern African country, without money, will pay for the second batch of vaccines of the National Pharmaceutical Group of China (Sinopharm).
Zimbabwe’s vice president, Constantino Chiwenga, head of the delegation that received the vaccines that included the finance minister, said frontline health professionals would be the first to be vaccinated.
“This is a timely donation … our people suffered from this pandemic. The vaccine offers the possibility that our people, who have borne the brunt of the economic devastation of the pandemic, can finally turn a new page,” said Chiwenga.
Zimbabwe has set aside $ 100 million to purchase vaccines and plans to buy 20 million doses to immunize about 60% of its population and obtain collective immunity.
Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said about 1.8 million doses of vaccines would be purchased from China. He gave no further details.
Last week, Senegal, a West African nation, paid $ 3.7 million for 200,000 doses of the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine – almost $ 19 per injection.
Only a handful of African nations have started giving vaccines as the continent struggled to get supplies for its 1.3 billion people, although many wealthier nations are moving ahead with mass immunization programs.
The African Union claims to have secured about 670 million doses for the African continent.
Zimbabwe is also negotiating with Russia to acquire its vaccines against Sputnik and expected more doses from India and COVAX.
The country has so far reported about 35,000 confirmed cases of the virus and nearly 1,400 deaths.