The health department is bracing for an influx of people wanting to get Covid-19 booster shots as it looks to combine vaccine services with mainstream health-care centres such as clinics and hospitals, after an almost lockdown-free festive holiday.
The National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) in 2021 decided the country would remain on adjusted lockdown level 1 throughout the festive season, citing modest hospitalisations as the country passed the peak of the fourth wave that was driven by the quicker spreading omicron variant.
Johnson & Johnson (J&J) booster vaccinations were rolled out on Christmas Eve to anyone who had received their last dose at least two months prior, while Pfizer boosters were made available from December 28.
The uptake of booster shots has been slow, at 11,895 booster jabs administered since the programme began, according to the SA coronavirus dashboard.
But as the year picks up after the holidays, the department expects numbers to soar. “I think it’s an abnormal period and that people who did vaccinate initially are likely to come for their boosters. We get a lot of queries on a daily basis,” said acting health director-general Nicholas Crisp, adding that many vaccination sites had shut down over the festive period with the bulk of health-care workers taking a much-needed break in the period.
“The world is still asleep right now but we need to go crazy next week to get people motivated again, but it’s easier when we know that vaccination sites are open again,” he said.
Booster doses are meant to ensure stronger immunity against the virus that causes Covid-19.
Adults are eligible for a booster shot six months after their second jab, while immunocompromised people will also be able to get a fourth dose six months after the third dose of the Pfizer vaccine.
Vaccine hesitancy has been a thorny issue in SA, with some citizens choosing to not get their jab against the virus.
To date, 28.3-million vaccines have been administered, with 43.3% of the male population and 56.7% of females, according to the latest data.
So far, more than 6.9-million J&J and nearly 21.4-million Pfizer vaccines have been administered.
Among the J&J jabs given, 734,077 were administered as part of the Sisonke trial, of which 234,709 were booster doses. Gauteng health-care workers took the bulk of the boosters at just over 63,116 shots, followed by health workers in the Western Cape, who took up 60,450 and KwaZulu-Natal at 39,212.
Large companies such as Discovery Health and MTN in 2021 used the country's occupational health and safety laws to implement mandatory vaccines for their workforce.
In SA, teenagers in the 12- to 18-year-old age group qualified in November for inoculation and so far 984,457 first jabs have been administered.
The government is yet to pronounce on whether that age group can receive booster jabs, saying the science is still being tested.
The ministry has established well over 3,500 vaccination sites countrywide, but Crisp said the department is looking to integrate those into the day-to-day services offered in the normal health-care network of hospitals and clinics to mitigate the heavy financial costs of running separate centres.
“It’s an expensive exercise for us to run 3,500 separate vaccination sites around the country. We would rather have vaccinations taking place in the normal health system where possible,” Crisp said.
Meanwhile, funds for the ministry to send out SMS texts to those due for a second or booster shot have run out. The department said it would in the coming weeks engage the media to galvanise citizens to vaccinate after 180 days for Pfizer or after 60 days for J&J without an appointment.
SA has passed the peak of the fourth wave driven by the omicron variant. It has to date registered over 3.5-million infections and 92,371 deaths, giving it a positivity rate of 19%.
Though preliminary studies showed hospital admissions in the current omicron-driven wave were lower compared to the delta wave, Crisp cautioned that the need to vaccinate still remained high. “Omicron is still vicious,” Crisp warned.
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