With the fourth wave of Covid-19 infections expected, non-governmental organisation DG Murray Trust CEO David Harrison on Thursday said government’s priority should be to vaccinate older people.

Harrison said older people were most likely to be admitted to hospital and most likely to die.

Government recently opened up vaccinations for the 12 to 17 age group.

“If we want to prevent people from being sick and dying, we have to focus on older people first and the logic for that is that both hospital admissions and deaths are concentrated in older age groups. Even if we want to ensure that everyone gets vaccinated, we have to ensure that at the front of the queue are older people,” he said.

Almost 90 000 people have, so far, died in South Africa owing to Covid-19.

Harrison explained that since March last year, over 80% of deaths and close to 60% of admissions were South Africans over 50 years of age.

He said for government to prevent lockdowns and other social and economic disruptions, it needed to prevent as much severe Covid-19 disease and as many deaths, as possible, quickly.

He acknowledged that government was experiencing challenges with the national demand for vaccines, which had faltered.

He said while there was enough vaccine supply in the country, there were places such as in rural and informal settlements, where there was insufficient service delivery of vaccines, adding that it must be addressed.

He explained that the distance people were willing to travel was shaped by the willingness to come forward for vaccination, adding that sites could be moved closer to communities.

“We know that poor and marginalised people are less likely to both have access to the vaccination but also less likely to come forward to the vaccination sites. We have to start thinking about how we are going to address that through incentives or other ways of offsetting some of those user costs,” explained Harrison.

VOOMA VACCINATION WEEKEND

Leading up to the next Vooma Vaccination Weekend, government hopes to achieve a 100% success rate in it bid to  vaccinate 500 000 people over three days.

Government will hold another Vooma Vaccination Weekend between November 12 and 14.

In September the first Vooma Vaccination Weekend achieved 75% of its target.

Harrison noted that government’s focus for the second Vooma Vaccination Weekend was to crush the power of the fourth wave by vaccinating five out of five people over the ages of 50 before the end of the year.

Vaccination sites will be open across the country during the weekend, and the goal is to ensure at least 95% capacity on the Saturday. 

While fewer sites will open on Sunday, the focus will be on outreach to large faith-congregations willing to be vaccinated on that day, the Department of Health said.