Cape Town - Health officials are hard at work to figure out why residents in Mitchells Plain are hesitant to take up the vaccine.
This as registration numbers for the area were lowest in the province at 24.9% overall.
“The Mitchells Plain phenomenon is actually something we are examining to try and find out exactly what the drivers are.
“There are factors which are mitigating to people coming forward for vaccination.
“A lot of those has got to do with who the opinion leaders are and how that information is distributed to people to either discourage them or make them very unsure about taking the vaccine,” health head, Dr Keith Cloete said as he addressed the media at the latest Covid-19 digicon briefing on Thursday.
Cloete said that he participated in a meeting last Wednesday with community leaders about the issue.
“We had all the local councillors, all the people from different political parties, religious leaders, coming together to commit to do a combined drive.
“So we will be watching the impact of doing this combined social mobilisation to get to the bottom of what is behind the resistance and hesitance in the area.”
Meanwhile there are currently 39 278 active infectious cases in the province. This is 4 218 more active cases (12% increase) in the last week.
“The proportion positive remains high at an average of 41.5%. We are currently seeing an average of 3 004 new diagnoses each day.
“Hospital admissions are at 339 new admissions per day. Deaths have increased, with around 108 deaths each day,” he said.
The combined public-private oxygen utilisation was also at its maximum capacity of 73.65 tons/day (98.2 % of production capacity of 75 tons a day) at the Afrox Western Cape plant.
“In addition to the increased production capacity at the Western Cape plant, around 22 tons of oxygen are being brought into the province by tankers,” said Cloete.
A cumulative total of 1 254 490 vaccines, which includes the Sisonke programme, have been administered to date.
Of this, 455 359 people have been fully vaccinated.
Premier Alan Winde added: “The very good news is that our vaccine supplies, which have been under pressure over the last two weeks, will start to increase significantly from next week. Nearly a quarter of a million vaccines will arrive in the Western Cape tomorrow (today) alone.”
Cape Times