[ad_1]
Olekantse Serati was among dozens of people who decided to get stung on Friday.
At the busy taxi rank near Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, a health worker with a megaphone called commuters, urging them to come get their COVID-19 vaccine.
Olekantse Serati was among dozens of people who decided to get stung on Friday.
“It’s a good thing that they brought us the vaccines here at the Bara taxi stand so that we don’t have to go to the vaccination centers or hospitals,” Serati said, adding: ” It’s also good that you can get the quick jab and go home right after.
The Johnson & Johnson jabs were donated to the pop-up center as part of South Africa’s efforts to increase the number of declining vaccinations.
“We realized that a lot of people are too busy, they don’t have time to go to our vaccination sites, so we brought the vaccine to the people,” said Zodwa Malamule, director of the clinic. Soweto.
Faced with the slowdown in the number of people vaccinated against COVID-19, South Africa has also opened up eligibility to all adults to increase the volume of vaccinations as it battles an outbreak of the disease caused by the variant. delta.
The country began offering vaccines to all people aged 18 and over on Friday, as the volume of vaccines administered per day stagnated, although vaccines are now more widely available.
Fewer than 200,000 jabs are given per day, up from 250,000 earlier this month and well below the target of 300,000 that the government had hoped to achieve at that time.
To increase the falling numbers, health officials decided to offer injections to young adults immediately, rather than waiting until September as had been planned earlier.
The vaccination campaign comes as the country grapples with a resurgence of COVID-19.
In the past 24 hours, South Africa has recorded more than 13,000 new COVID-19 infections, including 317 deaths. Nearly 80,000 people in South Africa have died from the disease during the pandemic, official figures show, but the actual number of deaths from COVID-19 is estimated to be nearly three times that amount, according to statistics showing the country’s average death rates.
South Africa has so far vaccinated more than 10 million people, of whom more than 4.6 million are fully vaccinated, either with the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine or with two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech. It aims to vaccinate 40 million people by February 2022.
After being hampered by a vaccine shortage, South Africa now has an adequate supply, mostly from doses it bought itself and aided by a US donation of nearly $ 6 million. of Pfizer-BioNTech doses.
While the government has partly attributed the reluctance to vaccinate to misinformation about vaccines, a new study has indicated that acceptance of vaccines among South Africans has increased.
According to the study conducted by the University of Johannesburg and the Human Science Research Council between June and July of this year, 72% of adults agree that vaccines are good to get.
At the Soweto pop-up vaccination center, Nomvelo Hadebe took advantage of the vaccinations now offered to people 18 years of age and over.
She said she had wanted to get the vaccine earlier but was not eligible because inoculations were limited to people 35 and older. As soon as South Africa opened up eligibility to everyone 18 and over, it wasted no time.
“I’m 22 and it’s a relief because I wanted to get the shot,” Hadebe said. “It’s a great initiative… They say prevention is better than cure, so I feel like it’s the best decision for my health and well-being.
Source link
