Pretoria - The City of Tshwane continues to record a sharp increase in Covid-19 infections with Pretoria West, Atteridgeville, Centurion, Hatfield, Mamelodi East, Soshanguve and Hammanskraal identified as hotspots.
Last week, medical experts identified a group of related SARS-CoV-2 viruses in South Africa, now named Omicron. These have been detected in Gauteng at a relatively high frequency, with more than 70% of genomes sequenced from specimens collected from November 14-23 belonging to this lineage.
As the City continued with its vaccination drive yesterday, Joaquim Muchanga from Mozambique got his first jab in one of the pop-up sites in Danville.
“Most people are sceptical, especially after the discovery of the new variant, so now they feel they wasted their time by getting vaccinated before. Vaccines are the only way we can fight this virus and return to normal,” he said.
A 50-year-old woman who asked not to be identified, and also took a Covid-19 jab at the pop-up site, said: “People have a lot of opinions when it comes to vaccines, especially certain religious groups. However, I feel that once we all get vaccinated, the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic will reduce and the virus will eventually die out.”
During his address to the nation on Sunday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the first and most powerful tool to fight Covid-19, was vaccination.
Vaccines had dramatically reduced severe illness, hospitalisation and death, he said. “Since May, over 25 million vaccine doses have been administered in South Africa.
“At least 41% of the adult population have received a one vaccine dose, and 35.6% of adult South Africans are fully vaccinated against Covid-19.”
Tshwane was yet to give an account of the uptake of vaccinations, saying it was still collating figures.
Pretoria News