It’s time for SA to get creative in improving vaccination rate

It is interesting to note Austria’s parliament last week approved making Covid vaccinations mandatory for adults from 4 February.

Austria joins Ecuador, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Indonesia and Micronesia as other countries to have made the same decision after all of all Austrian parties, with the exception of the far-right, supported the measure brought to parliament.

Failure to take the jab could see you forking out up to R62 000 from mid-March after an initial “introductory phase”.

It is compulsory to take the vaccine, except for pregnant women and those with a medical exemption.

In a further bid to encourage people to take the jab, their government has launched a lottery for all those vaccinated with prizes of R8 500 vouchers to be used in shops, hotels, restaurants and culture and sports venues.

Austria has suffered almost 14 000 Covid-related deaths in a population of roughly nine million people.

Their daily infection rates is at an all-time high with 27 600 infections on Wednesday last week.

About 72% of Austrians have been fully vaccinated.

Back home, our numbers of fully vaccinated people is far less – 16.4 million people, which equates to 27.2% of the population.

We have had more than 94 000 Covid-related deaths.

Due to the slow vaccination rate and jab hesitancy, it is time to think out of the box to encourage more people to get vaccinated.