At last, South Africa has begun its mass-scale vaccination programme and the first person to be inoculated was a nurse from Khayelitsha, Cape Town.
Khayelitsha nurse becomes first person vaccinated in SA
The first Covid-19 vaccine dose administered in South Africa was jabbed in the arm of Azoliswa Gidi-Dyosi, a healthcare worker from Khayelitsha District Hospital.
South Africa's first healthcare worker has been vaccinated against #COVID19 #VaccineRolloutSA #IChooseVacciNation pic.twitter.com/NZ0U9blpjo
— Dr Zweli Mkhize (@DrZweliMkhize) February 17, 2021
Gidi-Dyosi is one of at least 13 000 healthcare professionals who are in line to receive a shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the Western Cape.
President Cyril Ramaphosa and Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize have also been tipped to receive a jab, a move that the president hopes will reduce widespread vaccine hesitancy.
“We have called on leaders in various sectors and parts of the country to lead by example and get inoculated publicly. We will therefore witness some Premiers, MECs and leaders from civil society, religious formations and traditional leadership being vaccinated in all provinces,” the president said in a tweet.
Through this vaccination programme, government aims to achieve population immunity to save lives and protect livelihoods. We have chosen vaccination and we call on all South Africans to choose vaccination and protect one another.
— Cyril Ramaphosa #StaySafe (@CyrilRamaphosa) February 17, 2021
The vaccine drive has started — So, what now?
This is the first of many drives of this nature we expect to witness over the next few months. Mkhize revealed, in his speech at the 2021 SONA Debate, that South Africa has, in principle, acquired the millions of doses needed to achieve herd immunity.
The J&J batch of jabs that landed at OR Tambo International Airport is one of many deliveries that will be made in the next four weeks.
From what we understand, the rollout of the vaccine programme will be done on a dispatch basis, where every batch is spread across all nine provinces as soon as it makes landfall within our borders.