CABINET has approved the vaccination of the 18-to-34-year-old cohort as from Friday.
“As part of increasing the vaccination rollout programme, cabinet approved the vaccination of persons aged between 18 and 35 from August 20,” the cabinet said in a statement.
The cabinet also received a report from the NCCC indicating that over 9-million vaccines have been administered in SA to date, with over 7-milllion people partially vaccinated and over 4-million fully vaccinated.
“Cabinet welcomed the vaccination rollout plan to increase the uptake of vaccines, particularly in provinces that had shown a reduction in the uptake of vaccines.”
To date, South Africa has administered 9,962,111 vaccines since the beginning of the vaccine rollout.
Cabinet urged people to dispel unfounded and misleading conspiracy theories about the vaccines and choose life by vaccinating.
“Scientific evidence confirms that vaccinated people stand a better chance of surviving from COVID-19 than unvaccinated people. Therefore, we must all dispel the unfounded and misleading conspiracy theories about the vaccines and choose life by vaccinating,” Cabinet said in a statement.
“Cabinet further approved the keeping of the country under the Risk-Adjusted Alert Level 3 of the national lockdown, as advised by the Ministerial Advisory Committee. Cabinet encourages all unvaccinated people in South Africa to get vaccinated because vaccines protect us from getting seriously ill from COVID-19 and they save lives.”
Cabinet said the process to get vaccinated is easy.
“Simply visit your nearest vaccination site with your identity document to be registered and vaccinated. You can find your closest site from the more than 3 000 vaccination sites across the country at www.sacoronavirus.co.za/active-vaccination-sites.”
South Africa is aiming to vaccinate some 40 million of its 60 million people by February next year.
South Africa, meanwhile, recorded 14 728 new COVID-19 cases this week, bringing the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 2 638 981.
This increase represents a 22.1% positivity rate.
As per the National Department of Health, a further 384 COVID-19 related deaths have been reported, bringing total fatalities to 78 377 to date.
“The total number of cases today (14 728) is higher than yesterday (10 685) and higher than the average number of new cases per day over the seven preceding days (12 107),” the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said on Wednesday.
- Inside Politics
