- Provinces will be in charge of vaccine rollout.
- The Western Cape is looking to procuring extra vaccine doses for its residents.
- It is still unclear when vaccination will start.
Health experts are calling on the government to fast track the Covid-19 vaccination drive to save lives.
While other countries have started vaccinating their populations against Covid-19, it is still unclear when South Africa will receive their first doses.
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the country has so far secured 20 million doses that are expected to be delivered in the first half of 2021. Through a deal with the Serum Institute of India, it is expected that 1.5 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine should be delivered by February for healthcare workers.
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Currently, the Department of Health doesn't have timelines on when the population will be vaccinated.
What the department has said is that the vaccine roll-out plan will be divided into three categories: phase one will focus on frontline healthcare workers; phase two will focus on essential workers, the elderly and persons with co-morbidities; and phase three will focus on people 18 years and older. Provincial health departments will be tasked with vaccinating their populations.
Western Cape Premier Alan Winde this week, again, said the province was trying to secure more vaccines for its population. A move that has been criticised by Health Minister Zweli Mkhize.
Western Cape health spokesperson Mark van der Heever said: "A provincial Covid-19 coordinating committee has been established and will fulfil a stewardship role to enable a multi-sectoral provincial Covid-19 vaccination programme."
Professor Marc Mendelson, head of the University of Cape Town's (UCT) Division of Infectious Diseases and HIV Medicine at Groote Schuur Hospital, said if at least two-thirds of the population was not vaccinated quickly, the country would not reach herd immunity and might be hit by another harsher third wave of Covid-19.
"Globally, this pandemic has been the greatest challenge to the public health system that we've ever seen, and it's associated with a scientific endeavour that we have never seen before. We're definitely better off a year down the line, but there are a huge number of things that we need to answer. As a country, we still face deep problems with severe issues around vaccine strategy, and we haven't even talked about vaccine denial.
"The bottom line is that our response has been slow, even though it is now accelerating. We've been promised by the president that 67% of the population is going to be vaccinated by the end of the year. Remember, kids under 16 don't get vaccinated, so we are talking about 40 million people who need to be vaccinated," he said.
Inter-ministerial committees
So far, what the government has done is to form committees to assist with the vaccine procurement.
In December, the national Health Department established the national vaccine co-ordinating committee co-chaired by Dr Lesley Bamford.
Members include Marione Schonfeldt, a vaccination specialist, Dikeledi Tshabalala from National Treasury and Dr Anban Pillay, the deputy director-general at the Health Department and provincial heads of departments, among others.
In January, the committee said some of their plans included working with organised labour to mobilise its members to vaccinate and host events to remove the stigma from vaccines.
This week, Ramaphosa announced at the ANC's Progressive Business Forum that Cabinet had approved the establishment of an inter-ministerial committee that would oversee issues related to the Covid-19 vaccine drive.
The committee would be chaired by Deputy President David Mabuza, who was on sick leave for a month last year.
The committee is made up of 14 Cabinet ministers including Mkhize, Minister of Finance, Tito Mboweni, Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, Minister in The Presidency for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, Jackson Mthembu, Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula and the Minister of Police, Bheki Cele, among others. Government spokesperson Phumla Williams said the committee would meet once a week to solve challenges in vaccine rollout.
How vaccination will work
The national vaccine co-ordinating committee said provinces would use existing hospitals and healthcare centres to inoculate people. There would also be mobile centres in more rural parts of the country. The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority was set to implement a Yellow Vaccine Card System to track vaccinations.
