Staff Reporter
The Free State has secured enough COVID-19 vaccines for teachers and non-teaching staff in all the five districts of the province, Health MEC Montseng Tsiu has said.
She said this in an interview with The Free Stater as she allayed fears of the vaccine running out before all teachers in the province are vaccinated.
This after a minor stampede at Gonyane Primary School in Phahameng, Bloemfontein, where the provincial vaccination roll-out was launched on Wednesday.
“We have had a huge turnout here today but I would like assure everyone that no one will be turned away because the vaccine has run out,” said Tsiu.
“We received over 16 800 doses of the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine and by the end of the week we should have consumed all of them.
“We will then get a second batch of the vaccines for the other week.”
The MEC said her department initially anticipated vaccinating about 500 people from the provincial department of education but more people turned up.
“We had set up 10 vaccinating stations at this school but we had to call more medical staff due to the huge turnout and we now have 15 stations,” she said.
“You see there are many people waiting to be vaccinated outside, but none of them will go away without being vaccinated.”
Over a thousand teachers and non-teaching staff are believed to have shown up for the launch and they all expected to be vaccinated before going back home.
Asked how the Free State had managed to arrest the recent surge in COVID-19 cases, Tsiu said the increases were mostly attributed to cases emanating from schools and so they mostly focused on addressing the problem in those school clusters.
The MEC said the province experienced unexpected levels of infections among the educators because schools are an extension of society and whatever happens in communities finds a way to the schools.
“All that we are doing is to make sure that once we have a case at a given school, we send our teams to trace the close contacts of those who tested positive and immediately screen and test them,” she said.
“We then isolate those contacts for a period of 10 days and we feel that it is helpful.
“We have been going to the communities to encourage those over the age of 60 to be vaccinated.
“We have also been encouraging people to continue wearing their masks, observing social distancing and washing their hands regularly and using a sanitiser with over 70 percent alcohol.”
Tsiu said despite the recent increases in COVID-19 cases in the province, she does not think there will be a need to reopen the field hospitals which were decommissioned when the local figures initially went down.
She said when the field hospitals were closed, several beds at different hospitals were repurposed so that they can cater for COVID-19 patients should the need arise.
This included rearranging some of the beds and adding oxygen supplies to some of the beds as most COVID-19 patients usually experience breathing problems.
