Johannesburg – As the country enters the third wave of the deadly Covid-19 pandemic, health experts say South Africa shot itself in the foot by failing to roll out the vaccine programme timeously.
Professor Shabir Madhi, faculty dean of health sciences and the director of Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research at Wits told Sunday World that the “wait and see” approach adopted by the government had cost the country dearly.
“Unfortunately, it was blatantly evident that with SA only having started to earnestly engage in bi-laterals to secure Covid-19 vaccines directly from the manufacturers in January 2021, that any aspiration to vaccinate 40-million by year-end was doomed to failure.
Joining the queue to access vaccines at such a late stage contributed to SA only gaining access to vaccines when the allocation to the other countries who were aggressive in their engagements were fulfilled,” said Madhi.
Madhi added that it was this indecisiveness that will now contribute to scores of lives being lost.
“The struggling roll out of Covid-19 vaccines to high-risk groups poses the greatest challenge … if we had protected the high-risk groups against severe disease and death we would be better placed to weather this wave, which too was predictable.
“The failure of the timeous roll out of the Covid-19 vaccine programme now places the burden of weathering the third wave on the shoulders of the public, who need to be more responsible in adhering to masking and avoiding indoor gatherings.”
Dr Velile Ngidi, an academic and public health expert based at the University of Kwa- Zulu-Natal, said it was important to intensify awareness programmes to educate those who have been vaccinated that the jab is not a panacea that will end the virus.
“We need to be engaging with the people who have been vaccinated who think that the vaccination is a passport for them not to pay attention to Covid-19 protocols. If we fail to monitor this human behaviour, we risk undermining the little gains we have made in fighting Covid.”
He said another double-edged sword facing the country was the public health system, which was under severe constraint.
“Our level of preparedness for the third wave is heavily reliant on the state because it is responsible for coordination. Unfortunately, we have not done a lot to collaborate in distributing the burden of response to the private sector.”
South Africa has seen a sharp increase in Covid-19 cases, with daily infections of more than 8 000 being recorded.
At the heart of the infections is the rise of a new variant known as the Beta variant, which accounts for about 90% of the cases.
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