DURBAN - PHASE 2 of the vaccination roll-out ran smoothly in Durban yesterday, according to residents over the age of 60, health-care workers and eThekwini Municipality officials.
Yesterday, eThekwini Municipality speaker, Weziwe Thusi, and the deputy city manager for Community and Emergency Services, Dr Musa Gumede, inspected the Moses Mabhida vaccination centre at People’s Park.
Other vaccination sites in Durban include Prince Mshiyeni Memorial Hospital in uMlazi, Clairwood Field Hospital, Pinetown Civic Centre, Amanzimtoti Civic Centre, KwaMashu Indoor Sports Centre and the Stonebridge Community Hall in Phoenix.
Gumede said vaccination sites had been identified in every area and the number of sites that were open would gradually increase. “In uMlazi we’ve got one site right now, Prince Mshiyeni, but uMlazi is big so we are going to add other sites,” he said.
He said the more people register, the more sites would be opened related to the number of people in an area.
Gumede said the Pfizer double-shot vaccine would be administered in towns and other areas where it was not difficult for people to return for the second injection.
“It’s also difficult to manage the storage of Pfizer in the rural areas than here in the towns, where refrigeration, among other things is easier,” he said.
Thusi, who is over 60 and also received her vaccination yesterday, said the third wave was scary and it was good to have received the vaccine.
“Im here, I’m talking and I’m going to work now. So its good that all of us as the elderly do come and get their vaccination,” she said.
Maggie Pillay, 87, who received the Pfizer vaccine at about 11am at Moses Mabhida yesterday, said the process went quite well.
She said she waited in the “well-controlled” queue for about two hours.
Commenting some six hours after receiving the vaccine, Pillay said she had not experienced any symptoms.
Ward 97 councillor Andre Beetge said the roll-out was going well at the Amanzimtoti Civic Centre yesterday.
Beetge said the vaccine arrived on time at 7am, however, there was a communication gap and the pharmacists were not at the site to receive the vaccine.
He said 150 vaccine doses were received at the site at 9am.
There were no complaints from the residents.
“The nursing staff were very professional; I received positive feedback. The queues were not too long,” said Beetge.
Beegte added that a lot of residents in his ward received SMS messages to go and get vaccinated at Prince Mshiyeni Memorial hospital in uMlazi.
He said while the volumes of people were higher and the queues were longer there he had also received positive feedback from residents.
“No complaints, staff were courteous, there was social distancing and residents were quite happy,” he said.
Ward 64 councillor, Gavin Hegter, said he had spoken to the Clairwood Hospital manager who advised that the programme was going very well.
“The only problem is that they are battling to cope with the numbers. Today(Tuesday) they had over 500 people and at this rate they will be busy until about 8 tonight,” he said.
The KZN Health Department said yesterday that it planned on targeting 41 old-age homes, which has a total of 3 363 residents.
Health MEC Nomagugu Simelane said that they had “full confidence” in the 1 657 vaccinators.
“We also have an army of 1 299 outreach personnel who will be moving to our mobile vaccination sites,” Simelane said.
For phase 2, the department said it aims to vaccinate 2 933 million people. From this 955 048 people are above 60 years of age. They aimed to deliver 30 000 vaccinations each day, five days per week.
THE MERCURY