DURBAN - THOUSANDS of homeless people are expected to receive the Covid-19 vaccine this week, as the roll-out kicks off today at the city’s safe open spaces.
This according to Raymond Perrier, director of the Denis Hurley Centre (DHC). The sites include the Jewish Hall on August 23, the Strollers Building on August 24, the Denis Hurley Centre on August 25, and Block AK on Stamford Hill Road on August 26.
Perrier said it was great that Safer Cities, which is part of eThekwini Municipality, and the Department of Health, were working together to ensure the homeless were vaccinated.
“Unfortunately, at the moment, vaccinations are only available to people who have IDs or can remember their ID numbers, so they can be registered in the Electronic Vaccination Data System (EVDS),” he said.
However, Perrier said the DHC, as part of the National Homeless Network, was working with Dr Nicholas Crisp, the deputy director-general of the Department of Health, and head of the country’s vaccination drive, to develop a model to enable undocumented homeless people and undocumented refugees to access vaccines.
Perrier said he was hopeful that a pilot programme, which took place in Cape Town recently for undocumented people, would be rolled out across the country.
“We look forward to vaccinating several hundreds people this week, and we hope to vaccinate several thousand over the next few weeks,” he said.
In a statement yesterday, the KZN Health Department said it was diversifying its vaccination strategy by adding drive-through vaccination sites, as well as vaccinating people at churches, taxi ranks, and tribal courts, among other places. This follows the opening up of the roll-out to the 18-34 age group. Health MEC Nomagugu Simelane described the enthusiasm of this cohort towards receiving the vaccine as encouraging and exciting.
“They’re very excited. And we’re ready for them ... We have the personnel to operate vaccination sites, and we have the vaccine doses. We are also ready to vaccinate people in their own communities, as part of our community outreach. But we are urging them to register, so that there is order,” said Simelane, adding that on Thursday vaccines were administered at the Chesterville taxi rank.
Deputy director of the African Health Research Institute Professor Thumbi Ndung’u said that this proactive approach from the department was required to get vaccination rates up as quickly as possible.
The provincial Health Department said more than 1.8 million people have been vaccinated in KZN since the programme started this year.
For the week of August 8 to 14, 784 697 people were vaccinated in South Africa, while 1 112 845 were vaccinated from August 15-21. This indicates a week-on-week increase of 328 148 vaccinations.
At a briefing on Friday, Minister of Health Dr Joe Phaahla, announced that, in an effort to increase the rate of vaccinations, the department would launch a pilot project to be tested in Gauteng, Eastern Cape and KZN to transport people to vaccination sites.
“There must be more focus on taking the vaccine to the people, rather than getting people to come to the vaccine,” he said.
Phaahla added that the goal was to provide transport from high-density population areas to mass vaccination sites in urban areas.
“Details of this will be provided by the three provinces, where the trial will be running.”
THE MERCURY