‘Surely vaccinating 80,000 in one day is possible?’ - Ndlozi questions SA’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout

EFF MP Mbuyiseni Ndlozi has accused the government of incompetence in administering the Covid-19 vaccine.

Taking to social media on Tuesday, he said those in power could be faster in administering the life-saving jabs to health workers as they are at risk of contracting the coronavirus.

Ndlozi was reacting to health minister Zweli Mkhize’s address to MPs during a parliamentary debate on the country’s vaccine rollout.

Mkhize said SA was on course to complete vaccinating 40,000 health workers by Wednesday. He said all 80,000 vaccines will be administered in two weeks.

Ndlozi compared vaccinations to voting and said if the government can organise millions to vote on a single day, then administering 80,000 jabs should not take long.

“Utter incompetence. They can make more than 10 million people vote in a single day. Surely vaccination of 80,000 health workers, who are already working in health institutions, is possible in a day. Infrastructure is already there. Yet, true to their incompetence, they report 23,000 in four days,” he said.  

Mkhize and President Cyril Ramaphosa were among the first South Africans to receive the vaccine last Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Mkhize said SA will receive 80,000 more vaccines from Johnson & Johnson (J&J) on Saturday.

He said health workers are most likely to contract Covid-19.

“Statistics show that in SA, health-care workers are three or four times more likely than the general population to contract Covid-19. This is reflected by 54,685 health-care workers who have been infected in the public sector and 779 dying,” said Mkhize.

DA MP Siviwe Gwarube was also critical of SA’s procurement and rollout of the vaccine.

“This pandemic found us flat-footed and ill-equipped to deal and rise to the occasion. The partisan nature of parliament made holding government to account an impossible task.

“When the opposition started to ring the alarm about the vaccine rollout plan late last year, we were told ‘all is under control’. It was only months later when countries that have the same socioeconomic status as ours started to roll out their vaccine plans that we started to scramble for scraps on the international table,” she said.  

There were mixed reactions to Ndlozi’s view. Here’s what was said: