SA is in a race against time to vaccinate as many people as possible ahead of the fourth wave of coronavirus infections, anticipated in December, the Actuarial Society of SA (Assa) warned on Monday.
As of October 24, 21.3-million Covid-19 shots had been administered in SA, but only 11.56-million adults, or 28.8% of the adult population were fully immunised. SA is offering the single shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, or the double-shot Pfizer jab.
If SA’s vaccination rollout accelerated to reach the levels seen in the UK — which has fully immunised more than 80% of its population — it could dramatically cut the death rate in the next wave, said Adam Lowe, a member of Assa’s Covid-19 working group. Vaccination blunts coronavirus transmission and sharply reduces the risk of severe illness and death from Covid-19.
“If the country’s vaccination rollout is ramped up significantly to the levels reached in the UK, we may still see a peak of cases of between 19,000 and 20,000 a day, but we would expect to see a much lower peak in deaths. The UK had a third-wave peak (post-vaccination rollout) of between 10% and 15% of its second wave peak, implying if we got to this level of success with the vaccine rollout we could expect a peak of only 400-600 deaths per week using official counts,” he said.
This is a fraction of the death rate seen in SA’s third wave, which peaked in July with the rolling seven-day average of daily deaths reaching a high of 420, according to Our World in Data.
“The logistics of the rollout will have to be significantly enhanced to ensure vaccines reach the rural and less technologically enabled population, as well as overcoming the vaccine hesitancy and outright antivaccine sentiment, which still exists,” Lowe said.
The government is considering offering incentives such as food vouchers to shore up demand for vaccines among older people, as age is the single biggest risk factor for severe Covid-19.
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