Govt ‘on target’ to vaccinate 100 000 frontliners by Friday

The country aims to inoculate millions of its citizens through the procurement of various kinds of vaccines by the end of the year. 

The rollout strategy is being done in three parts, with the first phase focusing on healthcare workers. 

Phase two will see the inoculation of essential workers while phase three will close off with the inoculation of the elderly and people living with comorbidities.  

The first person in South Africa to receive the jab was nurse Zoliswa Gidi-Dyosi at the Khayelitsha District Hospital in the Western Cape. 

A little less than 3 weeks later, the country is close to the 100 000 mark. 

CEO of the South African Medical Research Council Professor Glenda Gray believes the country is on track to meeting its targets.  

“The good news is that we’ve already vaccinated over 92 000 healthcare workers in 16 days, and we hope to reach the 100 000th healthcare worker today. This means we’ve vaccinated 1 in 5 healthcare workers.” 

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The country has more than 1.2 million healthcare professionals in the public and private sector combined.  

“It’ a long way to go but we’ve learnt a lot in this first phase,” Gray said on Friday. 

It’s been a year since the country first reported its first case. 

Gray added there were some key take home lessons from the first phase.  

“The most important thing about this to continue to innovate, you need to keep learning and changing your processes to become more efficient and more lean. We can expect hiccups and hurdles, but the important thing is that together we change it and make it better,” she said.  

“We need to continue to work on improving the system so that by the time we get to phase two we’ve ironed out all the hurdles. It’s not perfect but it’s definitely much better than it was on day one.”