Encouraging words, but we have a long way to go
IT IS ENCOURAGING to hear the new US Consul-General in Durban expressing confidence about a Covid19 vaccine roll-out in South Africa, but the truth is it will require a lot more work – and time – before we get to the point where the hallowed herd immunity (vaccination of a sufficient number of the population to reduce further infection) is achieved.
As Health Minister Zweli Mkhize explained this week, a major setback was the discovery that the AstraZeneca vaccines were ineffective on the South African population and had to be re-sold, and having to belatedly switch to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
South Africa is now 79th on a list of 168 countries in the race to vaccinate their populations.
Having vaccinated less than 1% of the population, we lag behind Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, Kenya and Senegal.
At the current rate of vaccination, it will take us 10 years to reach herd immunity.
Mkhize announced that we have bought 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, and 31 million of the Johnson and Johnson variant, along with a schedule of roll-out dates that shows we will only finish jabbing people – a total of 41 million – on February 28 next year.
All this serves to illustrate what we have stated several times before, that we have a long way to go before we’re out of the Covid-19 quagmire.
Until we vaccinate 41 million of the population, and maybe even for a little longer thereafter, we are required – for our own sakes and for those of people around us – to take all the basic necessary precautions.