Cape Town - Calls are growing for a rapid increase in the supply of vaccines to reach the level of vaccination required to flatten the curve amid a massive surge in Covid-19 infections across parts of the country.
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the alarming spread of the Delta variant during his address on Monday.
“This variant was first detected in India at the end of March, and is now found in 85 countries. The Delta variant spread like wildfire in India in an alarming manner.
The Delta variant has now been detected in five of our provinces, namely the Eastern Cape, Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape,” he said.
Senior lecturer at the Department of Global Health at Stellenbosch University, Dr Jo Barnes, said the Delta variant of the virus was particularly “dangerous”.
“The most prominent characteristic of the Delta variant is its fast spread: estimates are that the variant is 1.5 times more contagious than the Alpha variant, which was first seen in Britain. That means that on average each person who acquires the Delta variant will pass the infection on to between 6 and 8 other people.
“One of the most important culprits in this regard are the young people who refuse to adhere to precautions and socialise without care, banking on the hope that they will not get ill. This is a vicious cycle we seem not to be able to break,” Barnes said.
She said the country “desperately” needed to speed up its vaccination roll-out.
“It is not only a question of obtaining more vaccines, although the authorities tend to hide behind that. We need much more effort to persuade the vaccine-hesitant to take the vaccine and we need to drastically improve our education campaigns so that they include more information than just bold instructions,” said Barnes.
Premier Alan Winde said the province was ready and able to scale up life-saving vaccinations beyond 120 000 vaccinations a week and were preparing mega vaccination sites to do so.
“We however need more vaccines to ramp this programme up further. We therefore call for a rapid increase in the supplies of vaccines so that we reach the level of vaccinations required to flatten the curve. We also call for global manufacturers to reconsider their position of not supplying to sub-national entities. We have the budget and the processes in place, and we remain ready to procure additional vaccines,“ he said.
By Monday, the Western Cape had 18 031 active Covid-19 infections, with a total number of 320 340 cases and 290 014 recoveries.
The province’s coronavirus dashboard has recorded 99 additional deaths since it last updated on Friday, bringing the total number of Covid-19 related deaths in the province to 12 295.
“On June 25, we received 191 880 doses of Pfizer, enabling us to increase our weekly targets to 80 000 residents vaccinated between June 28 and July 2, or week 7. In week 8, we will again increase this target to 100 000.
“This will assist us in getting our vaccine programme back on track following previous constraints in the national vaccine supply.
“We have also so far received 26 400 doses of Johnson & Johnson (J&J) for those in the education sector. The weekly supply pipeline of J&J is expected to be confirmed over the coming week.
“I call on residents who have not yet done so, and who are eligible, to register for their vaccine on the Electronic Vaccine Data System,” Winde said.
Cape Times