Pretoria - President Cyril Ramaphosa was on Thursday scheduled to visit two Gauteng vaccination sites in his bid to assess progress in South Africa’s vaccination programme.
Acting Presidency spokesperson Tyrone Seale said Ramaphosa’s visit will serve to motivate greater numbers of South Africans to embrace vaccination as the most effective weapon in the fight against Covid-19.
“Covid-19 vaccines are a safe and effective defence against serious illness, hospitalisation and death,” said Seale.
Ramaphosa will visit a public health facility in Tembisa and a private-public partnership centre in Midrand, in recognition of the close collaboration between government, the private sector and the active support of social partners.
“This partnership has enabled South Africa’s vaccination programme to gather pace. Under this programme, the number of vaccinated people now exceeds 7 million, with around a million people being vaccinated every week,” said Seale.
More than 1 500 volunteers comprising doctors, nurses and health workers have been brought on board to help with vaccination on weekends on various sites across all nine provinces.
“Doing away with sectoral prioritisation and moving to the age-based approach has proven more effective in reaching a wider spectrum of South Africans,” he said.
On Wednesday, over 520 more people succumbed to the coronavirus in South Africa, while over 17 351 more people were infected with the virus.
These figures took South Africa’s Covid-19 death toll to 70 908, while the over 17 000 new infections confirmed infections since last March to over 2.39 million.
According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, the number of new infections was higher than Tuesday's new cases, but it still represented a higher case average than the past seven days.
African News Agency (ANA)