The Anglican Church of Southern Africa has called for the Covid-19 vaccination to be made mandatory for its clergy.
The church's ruling Provincial Synod meeting voted on Friday for a resolution making the vaccinations for clergy mandatory and also urged lay Anglicans to “seriously consider vaccination”
The meeting said the move was necessary because the clergy visited people who were vulnerable to Covid-19 infection.
The decision comes amid a hot debate on whether companies and organisations should make vaccination mandatory to their workforce.
Some businesses, including Discovery, recently announced that they were considering mandatory vaccinations at workplaces.
The church's resolution also noted some of the congregants were vulnerable to the virus due to age or co-morbidities.
Professor Koleka Mlisana, co-chair of South Africa’s Ministerial Advisory Committee on Coronavirus, said in a presentation to the synod that vaccination rates were declining.
Mlisana also told the meeting that while South Africa should be vaccinating 300 000 people every day, in the 24 hours ending on September 21 the country had only vaccinated 195 000.
The average number of people being vaccinated every day had declined by nearly 10 % compared to a week earlier, according to Mlisana.
In another presentation to the synod, Professor Adrian Puren of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases also highlighted the importance of vaccinating as many people as possible.
The resolution read; " Our prophetic stance requires that our response takes into account the consensus of medical science that vaccinating as many people as possible is necessary to bring the pandemic under control."
The decision was also taken with the view that a likely fourth wave was predicted to hit the country later this year.
"We support the call from the Archbishop (Thabo Makgoba) for the mandatory vaccination of all clergy on the grounds that of necessity they have to be close to other people, they visit vulnerable people to provide pastoral care and numbers of people in our congregations are vulnerable by virtue of age or co-morbidities," said a statement issued by the church.