The hits and misses with the Covid-19 vaccine rollout in SA kept government on the backfoot for a long time as delays put it at the receiving end of censure.
Then, like a child who pesters his parents for months for a new toy and discards it after playing with it for a day, a huge portion of South Africans hesitant about receiving the potentially life-saving jab is basically doing the same with the chance to be vaccinated.
The biggest challenge is no longer the vaccine nor the country’s capacity, health department deputy director-general Dr Nicholas Crisp said. The biggest challenge is driving demand and getting the public past the point where we are now.
This warning should reach deep into the hearts and minds of people still hesitant to get a layer of protection against Covid-19 – and those they hold dear.
Crisp said SA has “quite a huge amount of vaccines and we are expecting a lot more”.
But all of this will be a futile exercise with no uptake from the public.
But all of this will be a futile exercise if there is no uptake from the public.
Only 12% of the population is vaccinated.
Part of the problem, it emerged over the weekend, was that the health department said it had no money for a mass communications campaign to drive awareness.
Friday’s total of 153,999 jabs administered was more than 43% lower than the daily record of 273,011 set on July 21. This week’s total was the lowest since the end of June.
Yes, sometimes money can make a lot of things to happen, but that should not be the excuse not to get the message out there.
Think of the example set by Limpopo, where the religious community played a huge role in getting the province to pole position in terms of number of vaccinations per capita.
In the words of the province’s health deputy director-general Dr Muthei Dombo: “We do not have unlimited resources but we ask how one person can assist, we keep things simple, and we make sure we understand our context.”
Listen to Stavros Nicolaou of Business for SA, which is working with the government on the vaccination rollout, who suggested it was time to take vaccines to the people rather than expect them to come forward.
“We need to go hard on broader mass mobilisation now. I am talking community interventions, community radio stations, mobile clinics and more,” he told the Sunday Times at the weekend.
This tacks onto Crisp’s comment that access to vaccination sites and general fatigue contributed to a low turnout.
“We have to overcome what we are experiencing, which is fatigue, and people are tired of hearing the same old, same old all the time.”
The department has set a target of inoculating 70% of the adult population – about 28-million people – by the end of the year, but to date only 4-million people have been fully vaccinated and only 7-million people partly vaccinated.
So we can try to understand why only 10% of men with comorbidities in the 50-60 year age group have been vaccinated and why we have seen a spectacular drop in daily vaccinations, but we need to look ahead now.
What we can control is how to go forward – and decisively deal with naysayers who by virtue of their standing in the medical, academic or any other influential fraternity spew conspiracy theories and modified facts as truth.
It is dangerous enough if a conspiracy theory is shared as truth on the neighbourhood’s WhatsApp group. It is deadly dangerous if a highly acclaimed heart surgeon like Dr Susan Vosloo is implicated in sharing these as facts.
In response to where she got her information, among others that Covid deaths are due to the vaccines, and that it is gene-altering treatment disguised as Covid-19 treatment, Vosloo told Vrye Weekblad: “I have learnt a lot, read, and watched presentations.”
One can scoff at a member of the public making such a statement, but coming from one of the country’s leading surgeons who successfully did her first heart transplant at the age of only 33, is catastrophic.
Shouting louder than the detractors will need a booming voice from authorities and all the support they can harness. Even if it means ward councillors walking door to door, churches encouraging their flocks, sports clubs scoring with the players and supporters, or just you nudging your neighbour in the right direction.
Do it. Just do it. Drown out the noise of dissent. It won’t cost a cent (and put politicians to work).
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