Zimbabwe received 2 million Covid-19 vaccines from China’s Sinovac. Its single largest shipment that it hopes will boost a vaccination campaign that has been slowed by shortages while infections and deaths rise.

The southern African nation imposed a dusk to dawn curfew and curbed the movement of people on 29 June in a bid to contain infections, which have since increased by 24% to 60 227.

Zimbabwe has only registered vaccines from China, India and Russia and not from Western countries. The three countries have made donations to Zimbabwe.

The delivery took Zimbabwe’s total number of vaccines from purchases and donations to 4.2 million, after another consignment of 500 000 doses arrived from China last week.

Zimbabweans were initially reluctant to be vaccinated but as cases surged in the past two weeks, more people sought vaccines at centres in the country’s two largest cities but they had run out.

As of Thursday, 542 people were hospitalised, more than double the figure two weeks ago.