By Tafara Mugwara

HARARE, April 25 (Xinhua) -- Early in the morning in Mbare, a low-income township south of downtown Harare, a group of women were tidying up their neighborhood.

One of them whisked away a wheelbarrow load of mainly plastic and cardboard trash as the others continued cleaning up the dusty place.

The women were among several groups of residents in one of Harare's oldest townships who had taken initiative to make their environment clean as a means to protect their community from diseases, not just from the coronavirus.

"When the pandemic hit, we were told that there is a lockdown, we should stay indoors. We realized that if we stay at home in unclean surroundings, maybe this disease (COVID-19) might infect us because we had no prior knowledge about this disease," said Maria Tambure, a resident of Mbare flats.

She said groups of women have embarked on a cleaning exercise as a way to welcome the vaccination drive in the community.

In Zimbabwe's capital and largest city Harare, the inoculation drive gained momentum following the rollout of vaccine to townships to ensure that no one will be left out in the vaccination exercise.

At Mbare Polyclinic, a medical center that caters to the local community, the queue for people receiving their jabs was moving fast. A senior medical worker told Xinhua that more than 300 local residents are receiving their jabs daily since the beginning of April when the center was opened as a vaccination point.

In a statement earlier this month, the Harare city council announced that 24 centers including hospitals, polyclinics and satellite clinics had been designated as vaccination points to speed up the vaccination drive in the city.

Zimbabwe aims to achieve 60 percent herd immunity with the vaccination of 10 million people by the end of 2021. So far, more than 325,000 people in the southern African country have received their first doses of Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines from China.

Jane Magombo, another Mbare flats resident welcomed the vaccination program following the decentralization, saying she hopes that vaccines will bring much-needed economic stability following a year of subsequent lockdowns.

"We are anticipating that if people get vaccinated, things will normalize further because at some point children were not going to school, we all stayed at home. But now they are going to school, even though for a few hours, it's much better, we hope to be vaccinated so that life can normalize," Magombo told Xinhua.

With the advent of the pandemic, it is low-income communities such as Mbare where the vast majority of residents depend on informal trade that have been hardest hit.

Due to the threat of the third wave of the pandemic, authorities hope that speeding up the vaccination program can revive the economy.

With the inoculation drive seemingly moving forward at full speed following the decentralization, and with the vaccination now open to all willing citizens, there is hope that residents of Zimbabwe's most populated urban area will show up for their jabs in numbers.

Justice Matsatsira, a business owner, capitalized on the vaccine decentralization to receive his second jab early in the morning before heading to work. He said he felt protected having been vaccinated.

Mordesta Macheri took the vaccine to encourage his family to take the jab amid vaccine hesitancy in townships.

"I have to come because my kids should learn from me. Because I have this vaccine, they are also going to come and have it," she said.

Zimbabwe launched its nationwide vaccination campaign on Feb. 18 with Sinopharm vaccines donated by China. Enditem

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