Covid-19 vaccines offer a ray of hope

In this global coronavirus pandemic, with hospitalisations, death and lockdowns all around, it’s easy to take a pessimistic “the glass is half-empty” view of life.

At the risk of being called “sunshine” journalists, though, we would like to say that after yesterday, when our vaccine programme effectively began, perhaps we should see our glass as half-full.

The first one million doses of Covid-19 vaccine arrived from India and after they have been “quarantined” themselves for about two weeks, they will start to be administered to 1,250,000 health workers.

Following on that, it will be the turn of essential workers, including teachers and police personnel, and then at-risk groups, including those over the age of 60 and those with comorbidities.

The vaccination ball is at last rolling and will accelerate from here on in.

Hopefully, South Africa can beat the predictions that our national vaccination target of 40 million people inoculated will only be reached by the middle of next year.

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We do worry about corruption, theft, mishandling of the vaccines and the myriad ways things can go wrong in our chaotic country.

But, for the first time in almost a year, hope is on the horizon.

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