The first and the most powerful tool we have to fight Covid-19 is vaccination, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Sunday night.
“We have a powerful tool called vaccination,” he said addressing to the nation on developments in the country’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The president said that since the first Covid-19 vaccines became available late last year, the country has seen how vaccines have dramatically reduced severe illness, hospitalisation and death in South Africa and across the world.
Vaccines do work and that they were saving lives, Ramaphosa said. Since we launched our public vaccination programme in May 2021, over 25 million vaccine doses have been administered in South Africa,” he said.
The president reminded the nation that this is by far the most extensive health intervention undertaken in this country in such a short period of time.
“Forty-one percent of the adult population have received at least one vaccine dose, and 35.6 per cent of adult South Africans are fully vaccinated against Covid-19. Significantly, 57 percent of people 60 years old and above are fully vaccinated, and 53 percent of people aged between 50 and 60 are fully vaccinated.
The president said that while this is welcome progress, he added that it is not enough to enable us to reduce infections, prevent illness and death and restore our economy.
He reminded the nation that vaccination against Covid-19 is free and urgently pleaded with South Africans who have not been vaccinated to go to their nearest vaccination station without delay.
“If there is someone in your family or among your friends who is not vaccinated, I call on you to encourage them to get vaccinated. Vaccination is by far the most important way to protect yourself and those around you against the Omicron variant, to reduce the impact of the fourth wave and to help restore the social freedoms we all yearn for.
Source: News365
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