Pretoria News

Slow pace of vaccinations our biggest threat

THE slow vaccination roll-out is by far the biggest threat to the country’s initial response to the pandemic, which earned us global praise.

We are reversing the early gains which saw South Africa recording fewer deaths and infections than initially anticipated.

The country is now back to alert level 3 as a result of a huge spike in daily infections and deaths.

While lives must be saved, the economic implications, especially for the hospitality industry, are severe.

Our vaccine roll-out has suffered a third major setback in just a few months, meaning that the country is nowhere near achieving population immunity by the end of the year.

However, President Cyril Ramaphosa is optimistic: “The pace of vaccinations has steadily picked up, and we are now vaccinating around 80 000 people a day at over 570 sites in the public and private sector.”

We have been here before. Those familiar with our editorials would recall the promises made after the failed AstraZeneca roll-out.

With the shortage of vaccines around the world, it continues to boggle the mind why the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority is not moving fast enough to process and approve the Chinese Sinovac and Russia’s Sputnik V vaccines, both were given the green light by the World Health Organization.

The problems experienced with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine should be enough reason that our country needs more types of vaccines.

We also enter the third wave with the future of the country’s health minister still unclear, after being placed on special leave following serious corruption allegations involving millions of rand related to the Covid-19 response. The less said about how acting Health Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane can handle our response to the pandemic while trying to help the hard-hit tourism industry, which she is responsible for, the better.

These matters and the lack of will to deal with those involved in multi-billion rand corruption uncovered in the procurement of PPE point to a worrying state of affairs in our country.

What this means for you, dear reader, is that we should not place all our hopes on the government.

We will overcome this crisis only if we remain alert at all times and not let our guard down.

OPINION

en-za

2021-06-17T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-17T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://pretorianews.pressreader.com/article/281771337143670

African News Agency