South Africa is struggling to use up its 25 million available Covid-19 doses due to the “less severe” nature of the fourth wave of the pandemic in the country, Health Minister Joe Phaahla said on Monday.
The minister said this when he responded to African National Congress lawmaker Xiaomei Havard’s question in parliament on government’s efforts to boost the vaccination roll-out plan should the National State of Disaster be suspended soon as stated by President Cyril Ramaphosa recently.
According to Phaahla, getting more young people vaccinated was one of the government’s main goals but it was proving to be difficult at this stage because the fourth wave has proved to be less severe, with less than a thousand cases found with the diseases nationwide in the past 24 hours.
“The vaccination programme is able to administer 250,000 vaccinations a day and all measures are in place to sustain this capability,” he told parliament.
He added: “But the challenge is convincing people to vaccinate. This is more difficult now because many believe that the pandemic is over purely because the impact of the fourth (Omicron) wave is less severe.”
Phaahla said the Ministry of Health, private sector and some non-governmental organisations had adopted new and intensified measures to get jabs into people’s arms.
A project management unit in the ministry was established to sustain vaccinations as other health services returned to full implementation, he said.
“The youth-focused programme, #KeReady, was launched and is being driven by a team led by young health professionals,” the minister said.
He added: “The Ministry of Higher Education has embarked on vaccination campaigns in all tertiary education institutions to improve the situation.”
NM/jn/APA