Business for SA (B4SA), a body set up to assist the government’s response to the Covid-19 outbreak, has rejected accusations that the system set up to register vaccine recipients, which is key to extending coverage and saving tens of thousands of lives by midwinter, has collapsed.
Reports that the system is not working circulated as problems at sites, including at Discovery’s headquarters, led to some people being vaccinated last week without having received prior notification — as the system was supposed to work.
While there have been some problems, the system is far from collapsed, B4SA steering committee leader Martin Kingston said. “There were undoubtedly teething system [problems] and certain aspects of the registration/booking system were not working optimally,” Kingston told Business Day on Sunday.
“I think it is to be expected with a project of this size and scale. There was no reason for us to believe that the system collapsed. It is a major exaggeration to say [so]." Problems are being rectified, he said.
With the government having endured months of criticism for the slow rollout of the vaccination programme, it was finally extended to the public last week. In its first four days, it reached 117,000 people at 155 public vaccination sites and 22 private sector ones.
The rollout was also hit by delays when the country abandoned the AstraZeneca shot, while the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccination has been delayed by contamination at a US company contracted to make a key ingredient.
Kingston said sufficient supplies have been secured to vaccinate SA’s entire adult population and the programme will be scaled up. Pfizer is delivering 325,000 doses a week, soon to be increased to 640,000. In the case of J&J, 1.1-million jabs have already been produced and are waiting at the Aspen manufacturing facility until given a green light by US regulators.
Another 1-million shots are scheduled for the end of the month, with 1-million a month arriving thereafter.
Kingston said at a briefing on Friday that by the previous day the total number of jabs had reached 34,000 a day, which he hoped would have increased to 54,000 by Friday.
B4SA hopes the daily rate will jump to 192,000 by June, which is still short of the 200,000-300,000 daily target needed if all adults are to be vaccinated by the end of 2021.
The biggest hurdle is the low number of registrations of people over the age of 60 on the electronic database. Of a population of 5.4-million, only 1.6-million have registered so far, which is “disappointingly low”. Reaching that part of the population could save up to 40,000 lives, he said.
Discovery Health’s Ron Whelan, who is involved in the B4SA initiative, said the first week had “gone pretty well. There have been some challenges, which was expected.”
SA’s accelerated programme comes as the IMF is trying
to galvanise international resources for a R700bn global vaccination campaign to cover at least 40% of the global population by end-2021 and at least 60% by the first half of 2022.
IMF MD Kristalina Georgieva said such an initiative — funded by grants, national government resources and concessional financing — is necessary to overcome the vaccination divide between rich and poor countries and to accelerate the recovery.
The IMF projects that advanced countries could donate at least 1-billion doses in 2021, even if they give preference to their own populations.
“With strong and co-ordinated action now — and with little in terms of financing relative to the outsize benefits — the world can durably exit this unprecedented health and economic crisis,” Georgieva said.
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