Durban - THE KwaZulu-Natal government plans to vaccinate 2.9 million people by October 2021 in phase 2 of the Covid-19 vaccination roll-strategy scheduled to begin on May 17.
KZN Premier Sihle Zikalala announced the plans for phase 2 yesterday during a provincial Covid-19 update in Durban.
He said the Sisonke Johnson & Johnson implementation study, under which health-care workers received the Covid-19 vaccine, was expected to resume soon and would end on April 30.
This follows the temporary suspension of the Johnson & Johnson vaccination roll-out after six US women developed a rare blood-clotting disorder after receiving the vaccine earlier this month.
Zikalala said from the start of phase 1 on February 18 until the vaccination suspension on April 12, KZN had vaccinated more than 51 000 health workers at 91 sites throughout the province.
These health workers included over 37 000 public sector workers and over 14 000 workers from the private sector.
Phase 1(b) is scheduled to start on May 1 and end on May 16. He said as part of phase 1(b), if an adequate number of vaccines was received, the province wanted to vaccinate the remaining 81 232 public health-care workers over seven days.
Zikalala said the phase 1(b) and phase 2 would run at the same time while an incremental approach would be used in phases 2 and 3, with the number of vaccination sites expected to increase as the programme was scaled up.
“Our target for phase 2 is to vaccinate at least 2.9 million people by October 2021, with phase 3 expected to begin in November 2021.”
Zikalala added that if the province was able to meet a daily target of 30 000 vaccinations, five days per week, phase 2 could be completed by September 2021.
“This will create an opportunity for us to commence phase 3 earlier, in October 2021.”
Professor Thumbi Ndung’u, deputy director of the African Health Research Institute, commended the provincial government’s proposed vaccination targets.
However Ndung’u said the challenges were enormous as KZN had a population of about 11.5 million people.
“I think the important thing now is to get vaccinations under way as soon as possible,” said Ndung’u.
He said while vaccine scepticism would pose a challenge, it would not be impossible.
“With good public education and fighting disinformation, I believe that uptake will be high, especially with what is happening in other badly affected countries is common knowledge,” said Ndung’u.
Dr Ridhwaan Suliman, senior researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, said 2.9 million was about 25% of the total population in KZN.
Suliman said the provinces were aligning to meet the national targets set out in the vaccination strategy.
He said assuming South Africa would have more vaccines available by the start of phase 3, the rate of vaccination would generally increase.
“Essentially the bottleneck is just acquiring doses within the country,” he said.
A tranche of vaccine doses was expected to arrive this week, which would kick off the wider national roll-out, he said.
Suliman explained that vaccine hesitancy would become an issue once the country started vaccinating a sufficient proportion of people.
“For now it’s not an issue because there is still demand for vaccination doses since we have not vaccinated that many people just yet.
“At some point, I don't know exact figures, but vaccine hesitancy will become a consideration with people not necessarily registering and presenting for doses. For now it’s not an issue because demand outstrips supply,” he said.
The KZN Department of Health has identified mass vaccination centres including the Royal Showgrounds in the Umgungundlovu District, and in eThekwini, the Pinetown Civic Centre, the King Zwelithini sports grounds and Cato Manor sports grounds were identified.
Hospitals and community health centres would be used as primary vaccination centres while clinics and other community structures, mapped per district, would be secondary vaccination centres, the premier said.
Unpacking the provincial Covid-19 statistics, Zikalala said KZN currently has 444 Covid-19 patients admitted in hospitals, with a recovery rate of 96%.
He said the overall provincial incidence risk remained at 5 cases per 100 000 population.
However, Zikalala said the King Cetshwayo, Harry Gwala and uThukela districts had observed an increase in the number of new cases.
The premier explained that KZN continued to rank second-highest in terms of the number of laboratory-confirmed cases countrywide, contributing 21% cases.
KZN has continued to observe a decline in the number of new cases recorded weekly.
“The overall percentage change in the number of new cases between week 15 and 16 was a decline of 8%.
“The actual number of new cases was 606 for week 15; and 555 for week 16 respectively.”
The Mercury