Has the government de-prioritised its vaccination programme?
No, definitely not
Why did the president hardly mention it in this year’s state of the nation address as opposed to 19 times in last year’s?
We were in the middle of a really aggressive phase of the pandemic then, and maybe there are other things, like trying to rebuild the economy, that are on his mind.
Doesn’t it suggest that vaccination is less of a government priority than it was?
I can’t say from the rest of the government’s side, but from a health perspective it’s still a serious priority.
So why are only 42% of adults fully vaccinated?
Well, we’ve had the capacity for the past six months, the vaccine and the vaccinators. We’ve got the public and private sectors all geared up to do it. And the people just don’t come. Older people have done very well coming.
Why have only a third of 18- to 39-year-olds been vaccinated?
Young people are not nearly as vulnerable to serious illness, so I guess it feels less devastating to them. We’ve just launched an advertising campaign aimed at those in this age group.
Couldn’t you have been doing more to advertise the fact that 85% of young people hospitalised with Covid were not vaccinated?
It seems to bounce off them. From our perspective we need to make sure we make vaccines accessible.
So why do a third of unvaccinated people say their problem is access?
We’ve been trying to understand that. There are people in townships in Gauteng who figure that a vaccine site 1km away is inaccessible.
Can’t you make it easier?
We do. We have pop-up sites, they’re in malls, at people’s places of work, all government clinics, taxi ranks, pension pay points. It’s difficult to know what next.
Why hasn’t the government made it mandatory?
It will be illegal, it will be in the Constitutional Court and chucked out in five minutes.
Haven’t the courts said it’s legal?
The law allows employers to do that but it’s not for the government to say they’ve got to.
If it can be made mandatory for private sector employees, why not for public servants?
Their employer is the department of public service & administration and we have a complicated bargaining process where these things get thrashed out.
Is maximum vaccination still the government’s goal?
The young people have told us they don’t see the value of vaccination. From a health department perspective I would love to see every single person vaccinated. But I’m not a marketing guru.
You have access to marketing gurus, don’t you?
Yes. But everybody thinks it’s the health department’s problem to solve our country’s vaccination. We would like to see the department of trade & industry, the department of sports, arts & culture, the department of water affairs, the department of agriculture doing more within their spheres of influence. Social development, for instance, has more access to unemployed people than we do.
Do you feel government departments are not pulling their weight?
Many of them are more passive than we’d like.
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