South Africa aims to rapidly scale up its vaccine efforts in the coming months as it aims to vaccinate a total of 40 million adults in the next year.

South Africa aims to rapidly scale up its vaccine efforts in the coming months as it aims to vaccinate a total of 40 million adults in the next year.
In a presentation this week, Business for South Africa (B4SA) said that a key part of this rollout will be private-sector vaccinations offered to workers, their families, and communities,
The group said that around 110 private and 210 public sites planned to be online this week and about 348,000 people have received their first shot.
Some of South Africa’s largest employers are now looking to open an initial 89 workplace sites which are capable of vaccinating as many as 24,300 people a day.
B4SA said that 3.7 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are expected by the end of June, with two million doses expected to arrive at the end of May.
This means that there is a required daily capacity of 192,000 vaccinations a day to consume this supply over the next six week, it said.
“Work is in progress to ensure that public and private sites have sufficient capacity and coverage.
“General practitioners, pharmacies, hospitals, occupational health and safety, and medical scheme and other groups are committing resources and infrastructure to provide the capacity.”
The mining industry is expected to be the biggest contributor initially, with 44 workplace sites planned, capable of vaccinating 17,580 people a day.
Agriculture, the industrial sector and other businesses will make up the rest of their initial sites, with more workplaces planned once they have received approval from the department of health.
The department has said that it will prioritise expedite applications from sites that can handle Pfizer 1100 dose pack size and have the potential for high throughput.
South Africa reported 3,755 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday (30 May), taking the total reported to 1,662,825.
Deaths have reached 56,439, while recoveries have climbed to 1,556,874, leaving the country with a balance of 49,512 active cases. The total number of vaccines administered is 968,319.
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