DURBAN - AS SOUTH Africa starts Phase 2 of the Covid-19 vaccination rollout today, healthcare workers (HCWs) who were not vaccinated in the Sisonke Johnson & Johnson study await to hear from the government how they will be included in this next phase.
The Mercury reported last week that vaccinations under the Sisonke implementation study for HCWs was expected to come to an end on Saturday to prevent a clash with Phase 2.
The study was also expanded to include non-patient-facing HCWs, which caused chaos last week outside Durban’s St Augustine’s Hospital as hundreds of HCWs showed up without an appointment to be vaccinated.
Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (Denosa) provincial secretary Mandla Shabangu said the union met with the Health Department following the incident. Shabangu said that during the meeting, the Department of Health agreed that the remainder of HCWs who did not get vaccinated as part of the Sisonke study would continue to get vaccinated today.
“The commitment that we were given, though it was not in writing, was that there is still Johnson & Johnson vaccine designated for healthcare workers, so it will continue until all healthcare workers are vaccinated,” said Shabangu. He said that Denosa would observe today how the continued vaccination of HCWs went.
He said the department had called for the unions not to panic.
In an interview with The Mercury last week, Dr Glenda Gray of the SA Medical Research Council, who is also the co-principal investigator of the Sisonke implementation study, said yesterday that in order to ensure the use of all the Johnson & Johnson vaccines, the definition of HCWs eligible for vaccination was expanded so that even those who were not patient-facing could get it.
Gray said HCWs who did not receive the study vaccine should not panic.
“It they don’t make the queues and miss out, they will be prioritised in the government roll-out for health-care workers. They don’t have to panic, they will get a vaccine,” she said.
She added that with the phase 2 roll-out scheduled to start next week,
Sisonke did not want to confuse people by overlapping with the government’s national roll-out, and therefore wanted to end before the start of phase 2 on Monday.
Gray said that on a positive note, the eagerness of HCWs to get vaccinated boded well for the national roll-out.
“It’s exciting for us because we were worried about vaccine hesitancy and were worried about poor demand after the pausing of the study. Just seeing this demand is very important for the national roll-out,” said Gray.
She added that she did not believe the queues outside the hospital would create a super-spreader event.
“When I saw the eNCA report (on the queues), it was in an open area and hopefully there was lots of sanitising going on and mask wearing and people weren’t hugging,” she said.
Gray said that they were hoping that the study would reach its target by Saturday at 2pm. However, if the target was not reached, they would discuss with the government how best to use the remainder of the study vaccine.
The president of the Young Nurses Indaba Trade Union, Lerato Madumo-Gova, said that since the start of the pandemic they had relied on media briefings and announcements to find out what was going on.
Madumo-Gova said the union was concerned that the entire rollout strategy was too rushed and had not been planned properly. Nurses registered to be vaccinated raised concerns about the long queues and chaos at the vaccination centres, she said.
When asked what would happen to HCWs who were not vaccinated under the Sisonke study, Dr Angelique Coetzee, who is the chairperson of the SA Medical Association, said these workers would receive the Pfizer vaccine under the national Department of Health’s rollout. “But it is a bit confusing due to poor communication,” she said.
THE MERCURY