A lack of transparency and bad planning on the part of the government has led South Africa to being at the back of COVID-19 vaccination allocation queues and missing vaccination targets, a report in News24 quotes experts as saying. Currently, healthcare workers in the country are being vaccinated as part of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) implementation study.
The report notes that while the study had teething problems, it is vaccinating as fast as possible but the numbers are still not enough and the Health Department will still miss its target of vaccinating 1.5m people by the end of March.
The co-lead of the local J&J study, Linda-Gail Bekker, said in News24 report that the the second tranche of the vaccination was going well and they were vaccinating at least 10,000 people per day. So far, just more than 110,000 healthcare workers have been vaccinated.
Bekker said because of the worldwide shortage of vaccines it was hard for countries like South Africa to secure vaccines. "The big problem here's the availability of vaccines. We are in a long queue and there is a worldwide shortage of the vaccine, now it depends on where you are and when your order was put in. That will be my guess that it is the limiting factor (in acquiring vaccines)." She added civil society should put pressure on the government and try and get answers on when exactly vaccines would land in the country. "In the meantime, we have Sisonke and we have learnt some very valuable lessons (from it)."
According to News24, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said the country would receive 500,000 J&J vaccines by the end of March. Between April and June, about 3m more doses from J&J are expected. About 600,000 doses from Pfizer are also expected before the end of March but it is still unclear whether this would happen as Mkhize said the country and the pharmaceutical company still have to sign agreements first.
The report says the country is supposed to receive 600,000 doses from the COVAX facility. But Alex van den Heever, the chair of social security systems administration and management studies at Wits University, said we should not be hopeful: "We are not even in the COVAX queue at this point because we said we aren't using AstraZeneca and that is what they are rolling out. This means COVAX is out of the picture until it starts distributing other vaccines."
Mkhize's spokesperson, Dr Lwazi Manzi, referred News24 to department spokesperson Popo Maja who did not respond to questions.
Van den Heever said the department had, from the beginning, taken to making vague statements on vaccine delivery because it had no proper rollout plan. "They have been vague about timing. We are probably going to get doses of any significance very late in the day. We will probably have a proper rollout from July and beyond; and that is very worrying." He added it was highly unlikely South Africa would reach herd immunity this year.
A vaccine calculator developed by Media Hack says that South Africa could achieve herd immunity by February next year if it vaccinates 210,000 people a day, reports TimesLIVE. The calculator allows users to see how long it would take to achieve herd immunity depending on how many vaccines are administered daily.
However, the report says, the latest stats by the Health Department indicate that South Africa has vaccinated 145,544 health workers since the first rollout on February 17.
This, according to the calculator, means that South Africa vaccinates 6,064 people a day and if the rollout does not expand at this pace, it will take 18 years and 16 days for the life-saving jab to reach its target of 40m people, or 67% of the population.
The report quotes Bekker as saying there aren't enough health workers to administer the COVID-19 vaccine. She said there was a need to expand the vaccination rollout to rural areas.
A statement on the Politicsweb site by Siviwe Gwarube, DA Shadow Minister of Health, said:
The Democratic Alliance (DA) calls on the inter-ministerial committee (IMC) headed by Deputy President David Mabuza to provide an urgent and honest report back on South Africa’s vaccine rollout programme which is yet to begin in the middle of March.
While the government has tried to create the impression that South Africa has started its vaccine programme, the truth is that the vaccines being administered thus far are merely part of a Johnson & Johnson trial – the Sisonke Protocol. This part of the vaccine rollout phase is perhaps the simplest as it targets healthcare workers in healthcare facilities. What is an impending crisis is how we in are tending on reaching the millions of remaining healthcare workers and the most vulnerable who require the vaccine when we can hardly put together 10,000 vaccinations per day.
South Africa is currently only managing to vaccinate an average of just over 6,000 people per day. Even if we manage to ramp up the vaccination to 10,000 people per day – which is wholly inadequate – it would still take us 4,000 days, essentially 10-11 years to meet government’s target of vaccinating 40m people to reach population immunity. This will mean that instead vaccinating 65% of the population by the end of the year, the target will only be met by 2031.
It is becoming apparent that South Africa’s vaccine rollout has failed before it has even started. The DA therefore calls for an honest diagnosis of where South Africa currently stands on the logistics of the vaccine rollout.
While government has long held that the issue is the throttled supply of the vaccine – due to our tardy strategy of acquiring vaccines – this is simply a slow train to nowhere. The third wave of infections hangs over South Africa like a grim reaper and the Department of Health keeps celebrating mediocrity that will cost us lives. Countries world over are vaccinating large chunks of their populations while we are still scrambling to get to 200,000 vaccines a month into our rollout process.
The Deputy President is expected to answer questions in the National Assembly this week, and we will certainly use this as an opportunity to grill him on what the delays are and how these challenges will be addressed. The very function of the IMC which was convened by the President was meant to provide political and administrative accountability over this process. It is time that government stops ducking and diving and level with the country on this process.
If South Africa fails to meet its vaccine deadlines, we will remain in an endless loop of lockdowns and COVID-19 infections which will cost us lives and shove millions into an inescapable cycle of poverty.
There has never been a greater imperative for the South African government than this. Silence on this can only mean the crisis is worse than anticipated. That is why we need an urgent update on this process.
“What is an impending crisis is how we are intending on reaching the millions of remaining healthcare workers and the most vulnerable who require the vaccine when we can hardly put together 10 000 vaccinations per day,” Gwarube is quoted in City Press as saying.
She said a third wave of COVID-19 infections hung over South Africa like a grim reaper while the department of health keeps celebrating mediocrity that will cost the country lives. Our target is to vaccinate 67% of the population, which will allow us to achieve herd immunity.
The report says according to the governmentʼs COVID-19 vaccination messaging guidelines published last Monday on the Health Department website, 40m people are targeted to be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity.
[link url="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/sa-vaccinating-10-000-people-a-day-but-experts-say-we-may-miss-targets-20210311"]Full News24 report (Open access)[/link]
[link url="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2021-03-16-vax-calculator-heres-how-many-people-sa-needs-to-vaccinate-daily-to-achieve-herd-immunity-by-2022/"]Full TimesLIVE report (Open access)[/link]
[link url="http://mediahack.co.za/datastories/coronavirus/vaccination-calculator/"]Vaccine calculator[/link]
[link url="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/politics/call-for-honest-report-of-sas-vaccine-rollout–siv"]Full statement on the Politicsweb site (Open access)[/link]
[link url="https://www.news24.com/citypress/news/it-will-take-11-years-to-vaccinate-40-million-south-africans-20210315"]Full News24 report (Open access)[/link]