Health Department says SA meeting daily Covid-19 inoculation targets

The department briefed Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Health on Wednesday and provided an update on the country’s vaccination campaign. 

“Yes, at the moment we are definitely meeting our targets,” said the department’s deputy director-general Dr Nicolas Crisp.

“Our target was to be at 250 000 per day by the end of this week. Last week our target was 200 000. We got to 191 000 last week but this week we have exceeded the 250 00 target on a day. We are confident that the programme is scaling up on the anticipated level.”

To date over 5 million Covid-19 jabs have been administered, with 257 492 administered in the past 24 hours. 

ALSO READ: Decision on Sputnik V expected late in third quarter – Sahpra

However, the country’s vaccine rollout programme has not been without hiccups.

At least 250 000 people are estimated to have missed their vaccination appointments last week due to the civil unrest that gripped KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

A further 25 000 vaccines are estimated to have been destroyed or stolen during the unrest. 

Crisp says the department is confident that it will not run out of vaccines. 

"As of yesterday we had 2.86 million doses combined of the Johnson & Johnson and the Pfizer vaccines in the country. At the rate we are going that is about 15 days of stock and we are expecting another 900 000 over the weekend if all goes according to plan."