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Virtual training on vaccination began in all provinces earlier this year.
CAPE TOWN – As the Health Department prepares to implement the first phase of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, there has been a lot of work behind the scenes to prepare.
Virtual training on vaccination began in all provinces earlier this year.
So far, thousands of doctors have registered to be vaccinators, while in the Western Cape, 888 have been trained.
Registered nurses, doctors, and some medical and nursing students are part of the team.
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After a brief setback, the country’s first COVID-19 vaccines are scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. Wednesday.
These will be distributed at 17 vaccine sites across the country.
These include the largest hospital in the country, Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital and Steve Biko Academic Hospital, both in Gauteng.
Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital in KwaZulu-Natal, Livingstone Hospital in Eastern Cape, and Pelonomi Hospital in Free State are among those that have also been prepared for vaccines.
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Meanwhile, in the Western Cape, deployment will begin at Groote Schuur, Tygerberg and Khayelitsha district hospitals, with 130,000 health workers who could soon be vaccinated.
Frontline health workers in the immediate drainage areas of these sites will receive their vaccinations for the next two weeks.
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Juanita Arendse, from the provincial health department, said that different sites would be identified in the provinces every fortnight.
“So, we hope that within 14 days we will receive another tranche of vaccines; 80,000 for the country and two weeks later, another 80,000 and I believe that two weeks later will be the balance of what was a kind of commitment of 300,000 vaccines ”.
Just under 13,000 vials of the 80,000 national doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine have been allocated to the province for distribution over a 14-day period.
Arendse said the final site count for each province will be determined once the implementation program is underway.
“In other provinces, there may be 10 or 20 vaccination sites after this Sisonke program is concluded and we have the vaccines, we will have more than 300 vaccination sites.”
Teams of vaccinators, including nurses, doctors, medical students and nurses, plan to administer up to 60 daily injections.
“At the moment, we are looking at a standard of about 60 (vaccines) per vaccinator per day, and we will change and modify that goal as we see what is feasible and what is feasible.”
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