The Senate of the University of Cape Town (UCT) Senate has voted overwhelmingly to make vaccines mandatory for all staff and students from next year, while medical academics at the University of Stellenbosch have launched a petition calling on Health Minister Dr Joe Phaahla to introduce mandatory COVID-19 vaccination and boosters for all employees and students at health care facilities and medical campuses.
The vote took place on Wednesday (22 September) afternoon, with 183 votes in support, 32 against, and five abstentions. The final decision on whether to adopt this policy still lies with the university's council.
Meanwhile, a petition has been initiated by medical academics at the University of Stellenbosch calling on Health Minister Dr Joe Phaahla to introduce mandatory COVID-19 vaccination and boosters for all employees and students at health care facilities and medical campuses.
The intention behind the petition, on Change.org, is to achieve their aims before the anticipated fourth wave hits South Africa. It was started by Prof Soraya Seedat, Prof Keymanthri Moodley, Dr Jantjie Taljaard, Prof Helmuth Reuter, Dr Therese Fish, and Jimmy Volmink.
Frontline healthcare workers, says the petition, have served the country unconditionally for three successive waves of infection. They have witnessed unprecedented suffering and death and are now exhausted, with many experiencing compassion fatigue and burnout.
During the third trough and pending fourth wave, they will continue to be exposed to potentially infectious cases of COVID-19 daily and also work with vulnerable populations at risk of dying from the pandemic.
They deserve better, pleads the petition.
“As a healthcare community, we are collectively responsible for protecting our healthcare workers and the vulnerable populations they work with."
1. We call for all healthcare facilities and medical campuses to require all their employees and students to be vaccinated against COVID-19. We stand with the growing number of scientific experts and institutions in South Africa and internationally in support of universal vaccination of healthcare workers.
The South African Committee of Medical Deans (SACOMD) and the South African Committee of Dental Deans (SACODD) have recommended compulsory COVID-19 vaccination for all healthcare workers and health sciences students, calling it a "moral imperative" to do so.
While we recognise that some healthcare workers cannot be vaccinated because of identified medical reasons and should be exempted from a mandate, they are a very small minority.
Existing COVID-19 vaccine mandates in other countries have shown promise. However, mandatory vaccination should not occur in a vacuum. We recognise there is historical mistrust in institutions of authority, medicine and science, even among healthcare workers. It is therefore essential that we also embark on meaningful engagement with employees and students to address their concerns, clearly communicate the evidence, and build trust to improve voluntary vaccine acceptance.
2. We ask that all healthcare workers be provided with appropriate vaccine boosters now. This could be a booster dose of the J&J vaccine, which has been shown, six months after vaccination, to increase antibody levels 9-fold, or alternatively, a heterologous prime-booster with a messenger RNA vaccine, such as the Pfizer vaccine.
Large numbers of healthcare workers became ill in the first and second waves and more than 1,300 of them have died in South Africa, from COVID-19.
During the second trough, 478,452 healthcare workers took the single dose J&J vaccine as research participants in the Sisonke trial. The mitigating impact of vaccination on healthcare worker infections and deaths during the peak of the third wave was striking and provided real-life proof of the efficacy of these vaccines in preventing infection, severe disease and death.
Unfortunately, infections in vaccinated healthcare workers are starting to rise again. These ‘breakthrough infections’ occur due to the widely recognised waning of immunity after only one shot of the J&J vaccine.
Although most breakthrough infections are not severe, they have a meaningful impact on our ability as healthcare workers to continue working and they unnecessarily expose our patients and colleagues to COVID-19.
While we stand firm that the urgent priority is to ensure that all South Africans are vaccinated, we cannot allow fully vaccinated healthcare workers to have waning protection. President Cyril Ramaphosa indicated in his speech to the nation on 12 September that there are sufficient vaccines for the entire adult population.
Please sign this petition if you believe that we need to do everything in our power to protect healthcare workers and their vulnerable patients in preparation for an inevitable fourth wave.
Access and read the full petition here.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Make vaccinations mandatory, says retired ConCourt judge
The debate over a mandatory vaccine policy for South Africa
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Encouraging safety results from Sisonke trial of J&J vaccine in SA
COVID-19 plus endemic problems push Eastern Cape Health to the edge