Western Cape Health Minister Nomafrench Mbombo has officially opened the first vaccination centre for private sector frontline workers at the Melomed Hospital in Gatesville in Cape Town. Mbombo says the centre will assist the province in achieving its target of vaccinating 132 000 health workers in both the public and private sectors.
About 13 000 public health workers have already been vaccinated in the province. Mbombo says the Gatesville site has already started the process of vaccinating private sector workers.
“Now that the private sector will be able to go to their site in Melomed because Saturday and Sundays they were coming to Groote Schuur and Tygerberg to be vaccinated, some of them have already been vaccinated. They will be able to assist us, especially the numbers for GPs on a Sunday at least.”
Group Marketing Manager at Melomed Hospital, Shameema Adams, says they are ready to start with the process.
“From tomorrow onwards we will start the official vaccination, but we will start today with a limited number because of the opening today. Numbers will be confirmed later today but we have received the first consignments, we have vaccinators inside and our full support team. We are just waiting for the number to come through.”
President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the South African Medical Research Council, Professor Glenda Gray, says the vaccination of both private and public sector healthcare workers is crucial in the fight against COVID-19.
“We have seen a lot of health care workers get hospitalised and die. Making sure that we allocate the correct amount of vaccine for the health care worker in the private sector is critical to make sure we can protect all healthcare workers before the next third wave. For me, it’s very gratifying to see the collaboration between the private and public sector, government and Melomed.”
Gray says more than 73 000 healthcare workers countrywide have received the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. She says they are committed to get to half a million in the next few weeks.
The province’s vaccination programme started last week:
