Lusaka, Jul 30 (IANS): The Zambian government said on Thursday that vaccination was a tool that could help attain herd immunity and bring Covid-19 under control.

Kennedy Malama, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health in charge of Technical Services said that it was evident that countries that have achieved high vaccination rates have seen reductions in severe disease and deaths due to Covid-19, the Xinhua news agency reported.

He said that a preliminary review of case management information in the country over the last three months has shown that the proportions of patients on oxygen and those critically ill and those who have died were much higher in unvaccinated cases compared to the vaccinated.

"We have a long way to go to assure health security for our people. We continue to see that countries that have achieved high vaccination rates have scored highly on key indicators of reduction in severe diseases and deaths, despite recording cases of new infections," he said in a statement on the Covid-19 situation.

Zambia launched its vaccination program on April 14, 2021 which was being done on a voluntary basis and a phased manner.

Meanwhile, the country recorded 708 new cases in the last 24 hours out of 6,700 tests done. This brings cumulative cases to 194,140 while 17 people died, bringing the total death cases to 3,355.