Samia Suluhu Hassan, the President of Tanzania, received a Covid-19 vaccination on Wednesday, and is at the forefront of a campaign to reverse the Covid scepticism of her predecessor, John Magufuli.
Magufuli had advocated prayer to beat the Covid-19 pandemic, rather than masks and vaccines and the country did not release any data on the virus in Tanzania while he was president.
He died in March, officially because of a heart condition, but there have been rumours he died as a result of Covid complications.
On Wednesday Hassan said: ‘We are not an island and that is why now we are starting vaccination.’
Over the weekend the country received one million vaccines from Johnson & Johnson as the country looks to start vaccinating widely.