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More than 47 000 mine workers contracted COVID-19 since outbreak: Minerals Council

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More than 47 000 mine workers contracted COVID-19 since its outbreak in South Africa, with more than 650 deaths recorded to date.

Over 120 000 mine workers have been vaccinated so far. This has been revealed by the Minerals Council of South Africa during a virtual meeting with Parliamentarians.

The Council briefed the Select and Portfolio Committees on Mineral Resources and Energy about vaccination progress in the mining industry.

In his opening remarks CEO of the Minerals Council, Roger Baxter told MPs how many employees in the mining industry have been vaccinated so far.

“The industry does employ 452 000 people. Just over 120 000 of our workers have been vaccinated of which 13% are fully vaccinated and the remaining 87% at least have had their first jab. And so, we are really going as fast as we practically can.

Obviously, up until the past month, the challenge was twofold. One was the registration of primary and secondary vaccination sites that does take a bit of time. But more importantly, was the access to the vaccines. But the access to the vaccines issue seems to have been solved through strong collaboration and partnership with the National Department of Health and working closely with Government including the Provincial Departments of Health.”

During her presentation, the Head of Health for the Minerals Council of South Africa Dr. Thuthula Balfour, spoke on COVID-19 cases and deaths recorded since the outbreak of the pandemic in the country.

“These are our statistics as of yesterday. We have had about 47 500 cases since the beginning of the pandemic in South Africa. And we also had 653 deaths. We still have significant numbers not high but significant numbers of cases, about 1 059 cases that are still active because the pandemic the mining sector has also not settled down.”

Balfour also highlighted the importance of transparency around COVID-19 and vaccinations to overcome the myths.

“We also have a very transparent approach if you go on our website, you will find all our dashboards daily published there including now the numbers of people that have been vaccinating and so we believed that with transparency there will be less myths that go around regarding COVID and this would assist with the education of people so that ultimately even with the vaccination programme they do accept the need to vaccinate and that is something that we are working very hard on,” Balfour added.

She says the Minerals Council of South Africa is looking into improving education around the acceptance of vaccines. Balfour says there are currently what she describes as “pockets of resistance to vaccination” they are – those who really need information or the anti-vaxxers. She says they are targeting a specific group for vaccine acceptance.

“Our focus is on the people that need education for them to be assured and for their fears to be allayed so that they do get the vaccine. The anti-vaxxers we do not concentrate on them because they tend to be fundamentalist in how they approach this. And your chances of success with them are very limited and it turns to be very educated people that have access to the internet and all of those other materials that float around, – you know,- preaching anti-vaccination.”

In his closing remarks, Mineral Resources and Energy Portfolio Committee Chairperson Sahlulele Luzipho emphasised that a healthy workforce is a productive one. Luzipho added that the mining sector should ramp up its COVID-19 interventions to ensure a healthy workforce.

“We hope that there will be more of the education and awareness that you will continue to be made regardless of the pharmaceutical considerations like the vaccines and so forth. But the non-pharmaceutical programmes will have to kick in including awareness on how people should behave themselves even before vaccination. I think those are the things we are looking forward to. And with a healthy workforce, most definitely productivity is the order of the day which, looking at the (unemployment)stats that we saw yesterday with regards the crisis of unemployment, that means we must do everything in our power.”

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