Clowns can’t run vaccination circus

SA surpassed the one million Covid-19 vaccinations mark nationwide this week.

That’s good reason to celebrate, but it is impossible to ignore the elephant in the room: the vaccination programme has only creaked into top gear after the private sector was involved in the roll-out.

Only 480,000 South Africans received the jab between February and mid-May – and the figure more than doubled the past two weeks.

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To put our one million vaccines in context: that leaves 39 million more citizens to be vaccinated before our target of herd immunity is reached. And they – plus the million who had their jabs – have to be vaccinated twice… South Africa continues to lag behind the world’s most affected countries.

There can be very little doubt that we would have been much, much further down the road if the private sector was allowed to purchase and administer vaccines right from the start.

Mass vaccination saves lives. Nothing illustrates it clearer than the Brazilian town Serrana.

All of the town’s adults were offered the CoronaVac vaccine between February and April. A total of 27 150 of Serrana’s 27 700 eligible adults were vaccinated and the town is thrilled with the results.

Infections are down 75% from March and there have been no deaths from Covid-19 among the vaccinated people. Those are the results I desire.

I want to spend many more years with the lovely Snapdragon and our four-year-old Egg. I want to have my mother and my son and my siblings for a long time. Most South Africans will echo my sentiments.

But our futures are threatened by botched vaccine purchases, corruption and incompetence. We will not reach that outcome if politicians with hidden agendas drive the roll-out.

Experts expect thousands of deaths during the coming third wave. Many of these could have been avoided if government didn’t insist on controlling the process.

The vaccination campaign is far too important to be left in the hands of government. Our private sector has the expertise to turn this most-affected country in Africa into one of the vaccination success stories.

Government doesn’t.

Why let the clowns run the circus? Let the experts control the process. And allow government to focus on the thing they know best: dealing with our corruption pandemic.