Pretoria - The City of Tshwane is more than ready to assist the Department of Health with its vaccination efforts, Health MMC Sakkie du Plooy has said.
Du Plooy was speaking as the City of Tshwane moved its Covid-19 outreach campaign to areas considered hot spots yesterday.
The areas are Soshanguve, Winterveldt, Mabopane, Rosslyn and Pretoria North, Centurion, Laudium and Olivenhoutbosh. Others are Eersterust, Mamelodi, Silverlakes, Lynnwood and Mooikloof.
The MMC said that the City’s mobile clinics were going out on a daily basis to the identified hot spots and offering people more than just testing and screening, but a bouquet of services.
At the same time, Du Plooy said that members of the environmental health team had also gone to various shops to check and monitor compliance. Du Plooy said that despite the outbreaks witnessed recently at the University of Pretoria and Hoërskool Waterkloof, it was safe to say that the City had yet to see the advent of the third wave of Covid-19.
He said that in both instances health teams had responded swiftly to the affected areas, locating, tracing, testing and alerting those who had been possibly exposed to the virus to go into quarantine.
He said he believed that these efforts had curbed further outbreaks in the City.
“Looking at the daily number of cases and the expected surge following the Easter weekend, I think it’s safe to say that although we have a slight rise in cases, we are far from being close to a third wave.”
And even though Du Plooy had previously noted that the pharmacy at FF Ribeiro Clinic at Sammy Marks Square was more than capable of handling Covid-19 vaccines, he said the list of vaccine sites earmarked for the second phase of vaccinations had yet to be released.
Having been part of the team identifying sites across the city, along with the provincial team, he said some of the centres would be more than able to vaccinate and accommodate at least 100 people.
For now, however, he has urged young people to assist the elderly, who will be vaccinated once the vaccination of health-care workers has been concluded.
“We need the youth who are more technology inclined to help the elderly register on the government’s website so they can be directed to their nearest vaccination site and date of availability.”
The Department of Health indicated that as of Tuesday there were 13 new cases in Region 1, and 16 in Region 3. These include Atteridgeville, Pretoria Central, Saulsville and Pretoria West and surrounding areas.
Region 4 had 14 new cases and Region 6 had 10.
Areas such as Hammanskraal, Temba, East Lynne, Cullinan and Bronkhorstspruit all had only one positive case each.
Pretoria News