Gauteng takes vaccination drive to people's doorsteps

• Gauteng has vaccinated fewer people than Limpopo and the Eastern Cape.
• About 25% of all adults in Gauteng are vaccinated.
• The province wants to vaccinate 10 million people by December. 

The Gauteng health department has had to develop more innovative strategies as people in the most populous province in the country have not been showing up at vaccination sites.  

Gauteng is trailing behind rural provinces such as Limpopo and the Eastern Cape when it comes to vaccinating citizens.  

According to national health department statistics, the Eastern Cape has the highest number of adults vaccinated in the country at 32.84%. Limpopo has also managed to vaccinate 31.79%. The Free State has also had high vaccination turnouts with 30.24% of its adult population getting the jab.  

Gauteng has only managed to vaccinate 25% of all adults in the province. The province aims to vaccinate about 10 million people by December.  

Since the pandemic started,  19 102 people have died in the province. Currently, there are 2 665 people in hospital. 

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Gauteng health department spokesperson Kwara Kekana says this has led the province to try new ways to persuade people to get the jab. 

The provincial health department started setting up pop-up sites at taxi ranks, workplaces, and other places where people congregate to bolster vaccination rates.  

Kekana says from the events, they realised that hesitancy was brought on by several factors, including fake news, concerns about side effects of the vaccines, and inadequate information.  

Professor Alex van den Heever, a health and social security expert, says it is hard to say why Gauteng is not attracting as many people for vaccination as the other provinces.  

Kekana says the pop-up sites have been working and they were, "... encouraged by the figures". The department has managed to administer more than a million doses from the end of August to date.

Now, the department is moving the vaccination drive to people's doorsteps. They have now started door-to-door campaigns for inoculation.  

On Saturday,  the provincial sports department will host a vaccination event at Altitude Beach in Fourways, where artists like Prince Kaybee and Lamiez Holworthy will be performing.  

Kekana says: "The provincial government has been engaged in a drive to take the vaccines to where people are, and this forms part of those efforts to increase the number of sites, and have more sites in communities apart from the non-clinical sites."  

Gauteng has administered more than four million Covid-19 vaccine doses to almost three million people.