The rollout of vacccines to healthcare workers is progressing well in the province
One week after the first vaccine was administered in the province, the Western Cape has vaccinated 5389 healthcare workers (as at 17h00 on 23/02), representing approximately 41% of its allocated 13 000 doses.
The Johnson and Johnson one dose vaccine is being administered as part of the Sisonke implementation study. The vaccine will arrive in four tranches, which will be administered to health care workers over a period of eight weeks.
Due to the small number of vaccines allocated in the first tranche and so as not to spread them out too thinly across the province, we have focused the rollout of the first batch to the immediate sub-districts surrounding the four identified vaccination sites: Groote Schuur, Tygerberg Hospital, Khayelitsha District Hospital and Karl Bremer, which was added as a site yesterday.
Other facilities and areas in the province will be added in tranches 2, 3 and 4. In the second tranche, vaccinations will be administered at 10 sites, 17 in tranche 3 and in tranche 4, we will conduct “mop up activities” to vaccinate as many healthcare workers as possible across the province.
These sites are not reserved for healthcare workers only working at each facility, and healthcare workers from the surrounding area, EMS, public healthcare facilities and City of Cape Town healthcare workers can all be vaccinated at these sites.
We have introduced sequencing in order to ensure equitable access across the province and ensure that we address risk factors.
According to this sequencing, vaccines will be allocated pro-rata per number of staff per facility. Within these allocations, further prioritization will need to take place taking into account:
- Individual vulnerability by age
- Individual vulnerability due to comorbidities
- Risk of exposure (patient facing vs non-patient facing staff)
- Criticality of setting (eg. working in critical care, Covid wards etc.)
We have experienced some minor early challenges in the rollout of phase 1, most of which have already been addressed and resolved. We have also seen the number of people being vaccinated increasing daily. Early on, syringe filling times caused some delays, but ongoing training of pharmacists has helped to resolve this problem. We have also experienced some challenges with the national government’s electronic system, however, we have been able to rely on a paper based back up system while these issues were being addressed.
To ensure that we prevent any situation emerging where a non-healthcare worker poses as a healthcare worker during this first phase of this vaccination programme, we will be requesting all healthcare workers to show staff identification, or to provide their Health Professions Council registration number as verification. Healthcare workers are our number one priority in this phase and I therefore appeal to residents not to try and skip the queue ahead of our frontline workers.
Planning for next phases:
Phases 2 and 3 will cover larger numbers of residents and will include other frontline services, people in congregate settings, those at risk due to age or comorbidity, and finally, in phase 3, the general adult population. We are working hard to put all the systems in place to roll out these phases when the time comes.
To date, we have:
- Finalised our master facilities list where vaccination will take place.
- Trained 1444 vaccinators to date.
- Confirmed the minus 70 degree storage capacity required for the Pfizer vaccine, with space for 450 000 vaccine vials.
- Prepared site readiness packs which will assist sites as they come online.
- Secured sufficient PPE for the vaccine rollout.
As announced in my SOPA last week, the Department of Health has made contact with vaccine suppliers and those manufacturers who responded to my call for vaccines, and today is the due date to supply all the required information. Once all this information is obtained, it will be evaluated by the sourcing team.
Covid-19 platform update:
For the sixth week in a row we have recorded decreases in the key Covid-19 indicators in the province. We continue to monitor and track these carefully.
- The reproductive or R number is currently 0.78-a number below 1 is a good sign.
- The seven-day rolling average of new Covid-19 infections has declined by 16%
- Hospital admissions have declined by 11% over the past 7 days, and deaths have declined by 40%.
- The proportion of tests returning a positive result is now below 10% and currently sits at 8%.
- Our Hospital of Hope at Brackengate currently has 33 patients admitted, the Mitchells Plain Hospital of Hope currently has 25 patients admitted and Sonstraal has 7 patients admitted.
- A total of 65 healthcare workers are currently Covid-19 positive- a dramatic change since the peak when over 1000 healthcare workers were positive at one time.
- Our oxygen use currently stands at just over 37 tonnes per day, well below the Afrox plant’s daily manufacturing capability.
These are all positive signs of recovery in our province but we must continue to do everything we can to ensure that we protect ourselves and loved ones from Covid-19.
As the Western Cape Government, we continue to employ our hotspot strategy in all of our districts to manage Covid-19 locally. This strategy has been proven to be effective, but we need members of the public to continue to use prevention behaviour to protect themselves and others. This includes wearing your mask correctly, washing your hands regularly, keeping surfaces clean, keeping your distance from other people and avoiding the 3Cs: close contact, confined spaces and crowds.
