Almost half of the 60 + group has received Covid jab, says health department

DEPUTY director-general in the health department, Dr Nicholas Crisp, says there’s been a significant improvement in the country’s vaccination rollout since it started over 60 days ago.

According to the Department of Health, 4 017 442 vaccine doses were administered as of Thursday. Of those, 191 833 were administered in the last 24-hour cycle, and 70 998 were second doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

To date, 378 403 people have been fully vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine, while 875 575 people have been vaccinated with the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Crisp said: “We are moving at almost 200 000 vaccinations a day. Yesterday it was 191 000, this week, it has been over 100,000, our target is to get to 250,000 by the end of next week. It’s a significant improvement from the 80,000 vaccinations per day, ten days ago.”

“We have now reached 5.6% of the population with at least one vaccination administered, but is still way too little for herd immunity. In the population groups of the 60 and above in the Western Cape, almost half of the population has been reached, and its pretty much the same across all provinces.”

Crisp also confirmed that the biggest dip was over weekends, when vaccine numbers drop significantly but said plans were under way to start vaccinations on weekends.

“This has been a big issue from the beginning. Adding capacity had always been the problem. The plan to address this entails recruiting students from health faculties and nursing colleges to “bolster capacity,” said Crisp.

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