Poor start to over 60s vaccine rollout in Gauteng

16 May 2021

Expectations have been raised about a mass rollout of Covid-19 vaccinations for over-60s from 17 May, but few people in this category in Gauteng will receive it this week as there are only 24 public health sites to be set up for the Pfizer vaccine.

This was disclosed last week at a meeting of the Gauteng Legislature Health Committee.

According to the department, the Pfizer doses will initially go to health workers and to institutions like old age homes.

This is a far cry from the 285 vaccination centres that were promised at the Gauteng Command Council briefing on 7 May. There were supposed to be 187 public sites and 98 private sites.

In February this year the Command Council claimed that there would be 345 vaccination sites in total - 191 public and 154 private.

DA Councillor Khathu Rasilingwane has visited 12 designated vaccination sites in Ekurhuleni, and she found that only one - the Alberton Civic Hall - was fully ready to start this week. The following sites were not even aware that they were supposed to do the vaccinations:

- Barcelona clinic
- Bedfordview clinic
- Spartan clinic
- Simunye clinic

Private sites will apparently only begin vaccinations from 24 May.

These sites should all have been ready to avoid the terrible long queues that we have seen with the last phase of the J&J Sisonke trial for health workers.

It now appears that the 1.1 million J&J vaccines that were promised in mid-May have not been delivered, so only a limited supply of Pfizer vaccines are available.

This is a shockingly poor start to the mass vaccination of 1.3 million people over 60 in Gauteng, which is extremely urgent in view of the third wave of infections that are now occurring.

It is a crushing disappointment that the government has yet again failed to delivery in this crucial area, which will lead to many Covid-19 deaths that could have been avoided.

Issued by Jack Bloom, DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for Health, 16 May 2021