Cape Town - The third wave is creeping ever closer and could be in the province within the next week, according to provincial head of health Dr Keith Cloete.
Speaking at the regular health and vaccination update digital news conference, Cloete said the department’s resurgence monitor dashboard showed a continuing week-on-week percentage increase in new cases.
“More than 20% for the last six days, despite already having a large number of cases. The number of active infectious cases has increased by over 30% from 3 000 to over 4 000 in the last two weeks
“Provincially case numbers are increasing, and the department is seeing an average 320 new diagnoses each day. Admissions are also increasing slowly with 40 new admissions a day. Deaths remain stable at around five to six each day.”
Meanwhile, the province has partnered with the City and the private sector to provide sites to enable mass Covid-19 vaccinations, according to Premier Alan Winde.
Winde said the mega-sites would be in the centre of Cape Town, the Cape Flats and the northern suburbs. It’s envisaged these will open in three to four weeks.
“They will open once the supply of vaccines enables the rapid increase in daily vaccinations in this way, without vaccinations in our rural areas being compromised. In the meantime, we’re set to reach our target of 100 000 first dose Pfizer vaccinations by the end of this week, with scale-up linked to available supplies,” he said.
The province is still waiting on the arrival of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccines, which has affected the roll-out.
“Sadly, the J&J vaccines have still not been cleared to leave their plant in the Eastern Cape, and so we still don’t have this pipeline of over 200 000 vaccines to increase our daily rate significantly,” Winde said.
“Based on the projected tranche delivery, and the delay in J&J vaccines, our teams will look to scale up from 60 000 vaccines this week to around 70 000 vaccinations next week so we have a responsible and fair programme in this province.”
At the same time, Finance and Economic Opportunities MEC David Maynier and Mayco member for community services and health Zahid Badroodien on Thursday visited one of the Shoprite stores that have partnered with the City to create awareness of the Covid-19 vaccination and assist the elderly to register for their vaccines during Sassa payout days.
Maynier said: “The fact is that in the end, economic recovery depends on vaccinating as many people as fast as possible, because with more jabs, there will be more jobs.
“We have in recent weeks engaged extensively with the private sector to build strong partnerships to increase the take-up and roll-out of the vaccine in the Western Cape.
“However, one significant area of concern has emerged from these engagements. While national government, to their credit, have partnered with Business for South Africa to enable private sector workplace vaccination sites, the system to register businesses is currently too complex.”
He said businesses wanted to help but were being frustrated by the complexity and asked for an urgent review to simplify and clarify the process.
On Thursday, Community Safety MEC Albert Fritz, who tested positive for Covid-19 in December last year, received his vaccination.
Fritz said: “I’m one of the fortunate ones who had relatively mild symptoms when I had Covid-19 last year. Of course, the psychological trauma is there regardless of your physical condition.
“Even if your symptoms are mild one day, you don’t know what’s going to happen the next day. It’s not an experience I want to go through again, and so I’m very glad that I received the jab today.”