Gauteng looking to ramp up daily Covid-19 vaccinations to 100k

As the Gauteng province aims to ramp up its Covid-19 vaccination campaign, Premier David Makhura says he is still worried about the slow pace of inoculations for the elderly.

Makhura was speaking in Tshwane on Thursday during an oversight visit to inspect vaccination centres around the area.

He said the provincial government wanted to double the number of vaccinations administered per day to 100,000.

Makhura said focus would be placed particularly on the busy cities and metros of the province.

“Currently we are vaccinating on average 53,000 people a day,” said Makhura.

“We want to vaccinate 100,000 people a day in Gauteng. The focus is Tshwane, Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni because that is where we have the largest number of people in Gauteng.”

Makhura also lamented the slow pace of vaccinations among the elderly population.

“We got a bit of a problem amongst the elderly people. We are going to be working with the Post Office. They [elderly people] come to get their pension and grants there. We want to make sure that we meet the elderly people first.”

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The Department of Health had targeted 1.3 million pensioners above the ages of 60 but only 700,000 have been inoculated so far.

To add to that, the 50-59 age cohort is also not vaccinating.

There are at least half a million that have received their jabs since the beginning of their vaccination period.