Johannesburg – Many South Africans have said that despite being jabbed either with Pfizer or the Johnson and Johnson vaccine months ago, they have still not received confirmation by an SMS from the Electronic Vaccination Data System (EVDS) portal.
This has happened at sites country-wide.
Residents who reported to the Fleurhof vaccination site when they opened in July were made to fill out forms as their systems were offline.
The Centre then also closed down a few weeks ago, in August, after it was burgled.
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Those who had to receive their second Pfizer jabs were sent to Discoverers Community Health Centre, only to be told that their first jab was never recorded, and they should again return after 42 days in order to receive their second EVDS number, even though they were receiving their second injections.
But Spokesperson for the Gauteng Health Department Kwara Kekana said that the facility, like a few other, had network challenges therefore clients could not be verified on EVDS, but that despite registering online on their phones, screening was still mandatory at the site.
As to why the manually filled out forms were never captured and SMS’s received, he said that was the responsibility of an offsite team. He also reassured that those people were definitely counted and included in the Stats under walk ins.
“Pfizer is a double dose vaccine and each of those has its own separate recordings / entries to be made,” he said adding that the SMS would be sent to these people.
South Africans have also been issued with various forms of proof of vaccination from books to cards and some with certificates.
In the event that there were enough books, photocopies of the original were handed out. Kekana said copies of the original booklets are made when there is shortage of the original ones.
But this posed questions that a vaccine card would be easy to fraud and replicate.
On Friday, Minister of Health, Joe Phaala, assured South Africans that digital vaccination certificates for vaccinated people in South Africa would be protected from fraud as far as possible.
He said that in about one week, those vaccinated are likely to be issued with digital vaccination certificates.
“These will be in line with WHO (World Health Organisation) requirements. The WHO is standardising vaccine certificates for all countries to decrease the possibility of fraud,” said Phaala.
The certificates can be uploaded onto smartphones and will be printable.
You can only get a certificate if your vaccination details had been recorded on the EVDS.
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