Government has singled out misinformation as of the major contributing factors that has resulted in low Covid-19 vaccine uptake.

Minister of Health Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda made the remarks during the official launch of the second Covid-19 vaccination express campaign in Lilongwe.

She said: “The whole essence of launching this campaign is to make sure that absorption of our vaccines is increased because we noted that towards the end of last year, at some point we were doing well then we reached the point when our numbers dropped again.”

According to Chiponda, the country failed to reach the 10 percent target during the first vaccination campaign.

“In the previous phase we have not done well because we are talking about 8 percent of illegible Malawians which is not good enough, we could have done better,” Chiponda said.

“We still have huge challenges especially in terms of misinformation, because negative things they do travel faster than good things.”

The health minister has however since expressed optimism that more Malawians will get the jab in the second phase amid multiple approaches.

Speaking during the launch, Unicef Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa Mohamed Fall different approaches taken by Malawi Government will assist in more people getting vaccinated.

“What I witnessed today was a different way of doing things that if you want the demand you need to go towards people to increase the uptake.”

“I think that’s what we need in the continent, because we are the continent that is lagging behind, so Initiative like this one should be replicated and spread across the continent to increase the vaccine uptake,” said Fall.

According to Ministry of health, a total of 1,881,955 vaccine doses have been administered in the country so far.

Cumulatively 1,098,898 and 399,078 people have received the first dose and second dose of AstraZeneca vaccine respectively, 376,648 have received Johnson and Johnson, and 7,327 have received first dose of Pfizer vaccine.