Health Minister Mkhize urges SA to take J&J vaccine when rollout resumes
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize is calling on South Africans to take the Johnson & Johnson vaccine when the rollout programme resumes in two days.
On Monday, the government announced the resumption of the treatment through the Sisonke implementation study will kick off again on Wednesday.
The trial was paused earlier this month after some patients in the United States developed a blood clot.
It’s since been established that there’s a one in a million chance of getting the clot after the vaccine.
Mkhize said this was a huge development for the country’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
He’s called on those who receive the vaccine to look out for the following symptoms.
“Issues of headache, dizziness, abdominal pain, vomiting… so we need people to ensure that they are always alert so that we can chat. But out of the 300,000 that have been vaccinated in SA, we haven’t had any serious symptoms.”
The second phase of the vaccine programme, which will start with the elderly, will begin on 17 May.
MORE INOCULATION SITES TO BE OPENED
Mkhize said that more inoculation sites would be opened.
With phase two of government’s vaccine rollout program starting in exactly three weeks’ time, Mkhize said that the sites where people could get vaccinated would slowly start expanding to reach the target of 3,300 sites throughout the country.
“We want to vaccinate as many people as possible in a day. By September, 250,000 people being vaccinated per day, then we’ll have a lot.”
Mkhize said they were expecting 1.1 million Johnson & Johnson vaccines to arrive in the country in the next few days.
With not enough research on the impact of the vaccine on pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, Mkhize said that people from this group would not be included in the vaccine programme for now.
-EWN
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