BY HENRY MHARA THE Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC) is lobbying the government to avail vaccines for sportspersons as plans to resume “high-risk” sporting disciplines gather momentum. Two weeks ago, SRC gave the greenlight for “low-risk” sport codes to resume activities, but under strict national and World Health Organisation COVID-19 protocols. The sports regulator yesterday held a virtual Press conference where it announced plans to give a go-ahead to medium and high-risk sporting disciplines. This came as President Emmerson Mnangagwa indicated on Twitter yesterday that government was considering ways to ensure safe resumption of football. “I have been speaking to football clubs across Zimbabwe, including Dynamos and @HighlanderBosso to see how we can safely get players back on the pitch and fans in the stadiums,” he tweeted. Athletes are not on the government priority list for COVID-19 vaccines that are currently being rolled out across the country. However, SRC is hoping to get a special waiver so that some sport codes that were stopped last year to combat the spread of coronavirus, can resume. Football, rugby, basketball, volleyball and boxing are among the sport codes that were classified as high-risk. “We are lobbying the government to allow the SRC to be allocated a certain number of vaccines that have been made available to the country and we want to be able to channel them to some of our sport codes in order to complement the other health protocols that they have put in place and play our role in that respect,” SRC chairperson Gerald Mlotshwa said. He said they had applied for approval of some of the medium and high-risk sport codes. Sport codes such as darts, baseball, sailing, gymnastics and weight-lifting are listed under medium risk. “We are waiting for feedback. Hopefully, by Thursday, we will be able to announce which of those categories have been allowed to commence activities and it will be phased. If we give a go-ahead to a particular sport code, there will be conditions to that. We will have to be careful and we will monitor compliance and capacity.” The SRC said it would not be in a position to help sport associations financially, but would relax some of the conditions needed to ease the process of sports resumption. He said sport could return without bio-bubble conditions as previously demanded. “We have to find a safe way to resume sport,” SRC said. SRC board member Allen Chiura admitted that the country’s health facilities have no capacity to handle the risks associated with the high-risk sport codes, but they are ready to take their chances. “Holding up will do more harm than resuming. If we do that (resuming) cautiously, we should be fine,” Chiura said. In a letter to all the medium and high-risk sport codes, SRC yesterday said: “We believe that a medium or high-risk sport does not remain medium or high-risk in perpetuity, but may become low risk where the degree of risk of transmission can be mitigated. The risk of transmission of COVID-19 where there is a reasonable frequency of test