South Africa starts vaccinating its elderly against COVID-19

<p>JOHANNESBURG &mdash; South Africa has started its mass vaccination drive with the goal of inoculating nearly 5 million elderly citizens over the age of 60 by the end of June.</p>
<p>Shots of the Pfizer vaccine were given to South Africans aged 60 and above on Monday to start the campaign. </p>
<p>So far the country has inoculated just over 478,000 of its health care workers with Johnson &amp; Johnson vaccines and it plans to give the shots to the remainder of its 1.2 million health workers by the end of this week.</p>
<p>According to the latest online registrations, more than 1.2 million elderly citizens and 945,000 health workers have completed online registrations to get vaccinated.</p>
<p>South Africa has nearly 1 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, after receiving a delivery of 325,260 doses of the vaccine on Sunday night.</p>
<p>“The Pfizer vaccines are safe and work well, even against the variant that is dominant in this country,” Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said Sunday night in a speech that was broadcast nationally.</p>
<p>By the end of June, the country expects to have received 4.5 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 2 million of the Johnson &amp; Johnson vaccine, Mkhize said.</p>
<p>South Africa’s vaccination drive comes as the country is seeing a rise in cases and experts warn of a resurgence of the disease as the country approaches the colder months of the Southern Hemisphere’s winter.</p>
<p>South Africa’s 7-day rolling average of daily new cases has nearly doubled over the past two weeks from 2.07 new cases per 100,000 people on May 2 to 4.13 new cases per 100,000 people on May 16. The country’s death rate has also nearly doubled over the past two weeks from 0.06 deaths per 100,000 people on May 2 to 0.11 deaths per 100,000 people on May 16.</p>
<p>South Africa has been the country hardest hit by the pandemic in Africa with more than 1.6 million confirmed infections and more than 55,000 reported deaths.</p>
<p>The health department said it plans to vaccinate more than 7,700 senior citizens at 102 old age homes by the end of the week, with a total 50,000 to be vaccinated by the end of May.</p>
<p>South Africa’s rollout of the vaccine has faced serious delays, including the return of 1 million AstraZeneca doses that were found to provide only minimal protection against the COVID-19 variant dominant in the country.</p>
<p>It also temporarily halted giving the Johnson &amp; Johnson vaccines to health care workers after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration flagged rare blood clots in some patients who had received the vaccine.</p>
<p>Mkhize has warned that those who have been vaccinated should continue to practice standard prevention measures like wearing masks and social distancing.</p>
<p>“The vaccine will protect you from getting severe COVID disease or dying from COVID. However, no vaccine works 100% and we also still do not know whether vaccination prevents transmission of the virus," Mkhize said. “It is therefore still important to follow the standard COVID-19 safety precautions to protect yourself and those around you.”</p>