Gauteng MEC for Education, Panyaza Lesufi visited the Discovery Health Midrand vaccination site at Gallagher Convention Centre on June 30 where teachers came in their numbers to get their jabs.
Lesufi shared his gratitude towards the teachers and Discovery Health.
He added that in an emergency meeting with the head of department at Gauteng Education Department and district directors the day before, he was shocked at the number of teachers who did not want to get vaccinated.
“For you [teachers] to take a decision to come here, I really thank you from the bottom of my heart,” Lesufi said.
“We need to protect the sector, and I am happy of the 125 000 staff members that need to vaccinate, we are now going over 55 000 within the first week.
“Let’s vaccinate everyone so that we can hand the baton to the others that have not been vaccinated, especially police and other public servants that need to be vaccinated.”
He also thanked Discovery Health for their assistance in providing the venue and vaccinators free of charge.
Paula Phelp, manager in the Discovery vaccination site roll-out team, said they had been working on setting up vaccination sites to support the national roll-out since December last year. As soon as the teacher rollout was announced, they worked with the education department to be able to support the teachers.
“We have schools from Tshwane South and West here today and we will roll out to Tshwane North and East and other schools nearby as the week goes on,” said Phelp.
“Our daily target is about 3 800 vaccinations per day when we are running at full capacity. There will of course be a composition of teachers and other eligible people that are allocated to the site as we are in phase two right now, which is over 60s and healthcare workers. So between those two cohorts, including the teachers, we should be able to reach those targets.”
Phelp concluded that the site was operational from 8:00 to 18:00, six days a week, Monday to Saturday.
Details: Log onto the Electronic Vaccination Data System website to register to vaccinate.
